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AMERICAN LABOR: 

ITS GREAT WRONGS, 
AND HOW IT CAN REDRESS THEM, 

AND OBTAIN FOR ITSELF 

GREA7 AND LASTING PROSPERITY: 

RESTORE HARMONY TO THE COUNTRY, 

AND PURITY TO THE GOVERNMENT. 

— BY- 
Author of" Warren's Criminal Law." 



When the laws are right, then labor tloih always pr 
When labor prospers well, then all things right »lo prosper. 
When labor prospers not, then nothing right doth prosper. 
Then, first, fix right the taws, so that labor shall prosper. 



( l J 7^ice in ^PctnxpKlet Fovnx, oO Cents. 

oQook, Clotlt Boizncl, 7 5 Cents. 



ST. JOSEPH, MO. : 

Steam Printing Co., Printers, Bookbinders, etc. 

1877. 



AMERICAN LABOR: 

ITS GREAT WRONGS, 
AND HOW IT CAN REDRESS THEM, 

AND OBTAIN FOR ITSELF 

GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY: 

RESTORE HARMONY TO THE COUNTRY, 

AND PURITY TO THE GOVERNMENT 

— BY — 

Author of" Warren's Criminal Law." 






When the laws are right, then labor doth always prosper. 
When labor prospers well, then all things right do prosper. 
When labor prospers not, then nothing right doth prosper. 
Then, first, fix right the laws, so that labor shall prosper. 






ST. JOSEPH, MO.: 
Steam Printing Co., Printers, Bookbinders, etc. 




v^ ^ 



Entered according to act of Congress, in the year Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-seven 

BY MARVIN WARREN, 

In the office of the librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



PREFACE. 



This little work is written in behalf of the rights and interests of labor; just as we 
conceive those rights and interests to exist, without any mental reservation or secret 
evasion whatever. All persons in the United States, whose interests are identified or 
joined with the interests of labor, have great interest in this book, or at least in its sub- 
ject matter. This includes farmers, mechanics, and artisans of all kinds, miners, 
women, men, girls and boys, who work for hire at all useful employments; also merchants, 
traders and professional men, and every other person in community, except where any 
of the persons above referred to have some greater interest, adverse to the interests of 
labor. The exceptions are comparatively few. The great majority, say nineteen- 
twentieths, probably thirty-nine fortieths, have a preponderance of interests on the side 
of labor. 

The following are the principal examples of interests adverse to labor. Men of large 
or considerable estates, consisting mostly of money or good claims for money ; and men in 
office.receiving large fixed salaries in money. Such men are interested in having hard times 
for labor, because that gives high interest on money, and low prices for labor and 
property, and great purchasing power of a little money over labor and property. Men 
who are intent on buying in the estates of others at low or insignificant prices, so as to 
own everything if possible, are interested in having hard times for labor, and the harder 
it is for labor, the better for these avaricious, moneyed men. Likewise politicians 
and newspaper men, specially sustained by these moneyed and speculative interests, are 
identified or united with the same interests. 

People who are wholly interested in the prosperity of labor, and who can have the 
patience to study this little work through carefully, and impartially, will, it is hoped 
and believed, be enabled to see how American labor can put far away hard times, so 
called, and secure to itself great and lasting prosperity ; establish harmony of the differ- 
ent races, occupations, political creeds, and sections of the country, one with another ; 
thoroughly purify the government, and reform it upon true republican principles; and 
also greatly raise the actual value and price of all real estate. 

There is no great difficulty in understanding what laws are necessary to be passed in 
order to secure labor in its constant and profitable employment in all useful occupations 
and throughout all parts of the country, if we only direct our attention to this one 
inquiry, as the subject of highest earthly importance to us, which, at this time at least, 
it surely is. Diversions of our minds, and perversions of the plain truths, practiced upon 
us for personal and party interests, is all that prevents us from coming to a correct and 
common understanding of the great important truths, and putting them into effect. 
These diversions and perversions can, and as I believe will yet, be overcome in this 
country. 



4 PREFACE. 

The reader will not be troubled in this work with long and detailed narrations of 
events, nor any great multiplicity of facts to be remembered. In fact the author has 
not aimed to exhaust the subject in detail in this work, but only to establish leading 
truths and refute leading errors. A great detail of facts for the purpose of this work, 
would tend to hinder its reading, circulation, and usefulness. 

A man's wisdom does not consist wholly in learning an immense number of facts, 
but rather in drawing wholesome lessons ot practical instruction from the facts that he 
does learn. He that refuses to learn from a few occurrences or facts, will never learn 
from many. What is urged upon the reader, is to study well, with an independence of 
thought, the facts that we will cite, as also other passing events transpiring before him, 
with a view to the establishment of important fundamental principles. We divide our 
little work into three parts, as follows : 

Part First treats of the measures necessary to be adopted into law to give great 
and lasting prosperity to labor. 

Part Second treats of the salutary effects to be produced upon the whole country 
and the government by giving prosperity to labor. 

Part Third treats of the means by which the people of labor can secure the pas- 
sage of those laws that will give permanent prosperity to labor. 

M. WARREN. 
Fairbury, Nebraska, June i, 1877. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I 



BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE GREAT AND LASTING PROS- 
PERITY. 



Chapter I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 
X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 
XXIII. 
XXIV 

XXV. 
XXVI. 



What high degree of prosperity we can have — French Prosperity. 
Present condition of the United States — Industrial and Financial. 
Why this difference in the condition of labor between France and the 

United States and Germany. 
Let us not fall out yet. 

Why is it so important to have money plenty? 
Important, indispensable and universal agency of money. 
How did the French people get so muth specie, $1,250,000,000 ? 
Objections answered — Permanence of prosperity — Inflation in France, 

and basis of her paper money. 
Labor prosperity in England eighteen years, from 1797 to 1S15. 
The terrible labor oppression in England from 1815 to 1825. 
We have a similar scheme on hand in this country — Demonetization of 

silver. 
Specie — Specie basis — Specie payments. 
Did England after all establish specie basis ? 
Experience of the United State with specie basis currency. 
Summary of specie basis for currency. 
The Greenback — Legal Tender — The Rag Baby. 
The great issue of this epoch. 

Coming to the heart of our subject — Pleasantry ahead. 
What is the true basis of value to money ? 
The only true and reliable basis to the value of money,, is the law of 

legal tender for the payment of debts. 
How to regulate the quantity of money in circulation. 
Government bonds and import duties — How to be paid. 
Cause of the Dark Ages. 

Definitions, brevities and rules relative to labor, money and finance. 
The national banking swindle. 
Effect of our bad money laws, especially on farmers — The power of 

interest on money — Honest labor robbed — The robbery legalized 

and made honorable — The property of the nation passing to the 

robbers. 



XXVII. 



XXVIII. 
XXIX. 



CONTENTS. 

In Nebraska, and all the States and Territories, we can have prosper- 
ity — The plenty of money at money centers dodge — Dr. Benjamin 
Franklin's loan office system — The South — Grasshoppers — Lazy 
Americans — Over production, &c. 

All the time, without interruption, we can have great prosperity of labor. 

Letter of ex-United States Treasurer F. E. Spinner — His opinion and 
longing desire. 



PART II. 



OUR PROSPERITY AND HARMONY IN ALL MATTERS, DEPENDS ON 
THE PROSPERITY OF LABOR. 

XXX. How to adjust the Southern difficulties, and restore universal peace, 

harmony, and sound loyalty to the whole country. 
XXXI. How the Government to be purified and reformed upon true republican 
principles. 
XXXII. There is no other way to accomplish these things except to prosper labor. 
XXXHI. Specie basis is ruin in every particular — Legal Tender, with inter- 
convertability, is great prosperity in every particular. 



PART III. 



HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER 

LABOR ? 

XXXIV. What sacrifice will it pay to make in this cause. 
XXXV. The obstacles to be overcome, and the advantages we have in this 

contest. 
XXXVI. We must have an organized party to secure the rights of labor — And 

that organization must be a thorough one. 
XXXVII. The Independent party — Its great mission — Its supplement to the 
Declaration of Independence. 
XXXVIII. Address to Greenback Republicans, so called. 
XXXIX. Address to Greenback Democrats, so called. 

XL. How to cast our votes right and not throw them away. 
XLI. The great confidence game. 

XLII. To oppress or neglect labor is treason to the government of our fathers, 
XLIII. How can men and parties become so corrupt ? 
XLIV. The corrupting power of money extends into the Church— Specie basis 

is the cause, and extortion the effect — The remedy. 
XLV. Independents, take your own newspapers. 
XLVL President Hayes' Inaugural— The same old cant— The British nobility 
doctrine Americanized for the millionth time. 
XLVII. What is to be done?— Great incentives to action. 
XLVIII. Eighteen necessary rules and precautions in our Independent political 
movement. 
( XLIX. Conclusion. 



PART FIRST 



BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE GREAT 
AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 



CHAPTER L 



WHAT HIGH DEGREE OF PROSPERITY WE CAN HAVE. 
FRENCH PROSPERITY. 



It becomes necessary to know first, what high degree of prosperity 
we could have by the proper laws adapted to that purpose. Then we 
shall be able to judge what we have a right to expect and demand at the 
hands of our government in this particular. And what we reasonably 
have a right to expect and demand, we should expect and demand 
until we get it, taking no prevarications or excuses for answer. 

I here affirm that we can have prosperity equal to, and in some 
respects much greater than, that of the French people, as described in 
the following extract of a correspondence, written at Paris, to the Phila- 
delpia Press. It says : "Work, work, work, is the order of the day in 
France. You see it in Paris, you see it in the Provinces, imprinted on 
every face, and on every feature of the country. Labor, improbus labor, 
is the all powerful impulse which predominates over and occupies the 
population. * * * Capital abounds, and money is to be had almost 
for the asking. The other day it was a sight to see the crowds of 
blouses and bonnets, men and women of the working classes, thronging 
the Bureau to invest their savings in the new lines of Paris tramways. 
* * * Building operations too have burst forth again almost with 
furuer, stimulated by high prices and the rise of rentals, which, high as 
they were before, have just made another decided step in advance. I 
have mentioned before the large increase in the Paris octroi, which, 
levied as it mainly is upon the necessaries and comforts, rather than the 
luxuries of life, shows increased means and consumption on the part of 
the industrial classes. The payment in advance of direct taxation, is 
larger than it has ever been before." 

American laborers, please notice closely the kind, as well as degree, 
of prosperity in France. You see it is the prosperity of labor. It is the 
prosperity of the masses. It is real, permanent prosperity. It is not 
the prosperity of a few amassing wealth at the expense of the many. 
And observe, "money is to be had almost for the asking." Every 
person's credit is good, because every person is prospering, everybody is 
accumulating. Real estate is high, rent is high, and money cheap, 
and everybody is hard at work and rejoicing. 

How exactly opposite from this in every particular is our condition ? 



IQ BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 



CHAPTER II. 



PRESENT CONDITION OF THE UNITED STATES— INDUS- 
TRIAL AND FINANCIAL. 



The following is from the Inter- Ocean, an administration newspaper 
of this country, which must be received as good authority when it states 
things so positive against its own party administration. It says: "It 
is a generally admitted fact that there never was a time in the history of 
the United States when a greater amount of misery, poverty and wretch- 
edness existed than at the present time. New York is full of want. 
Every third store you come to in Broadway is closed up. Working men 
are parading the streets, publicly setting forth their sufferings and calling 
for relief. In Boston, things are if anything worse ; and a similar state 
of affairs exists in all the larger cities of the United States. One of the 
most unhappy phases of this universal depression, is the number of 
educated and refined persons who are out of employment — college 
graduates, professional men, clerks and the like — men whose training 
has not fitted them for physical labor, and whose feelings will not permit 
them to resort to beggery or crime. * * Nor is this pressing state 
of affairs confined to the East. In Chicago, to-day, there are hundreds 
of well born, well bred and well informed men walking the streets with- 
out a cent, and without a knowledge of where to get a dinner or a bed. 
How these poor unfortunates live is best known to themselves. An 
empty stomach sharpens the wits, and a few cents to the initiated go a 
long way. Weary men tramp the streets day after day seeking employ- 
ment, returning at night faint and foot sore, perhaps to tramp again till 
morning, or to lie down on some friendly bench or by the margin of the 
lake. Week after week the weary round goes on, until the clothes of 
the once respectable and well-clad man are seedy, and his general 
appearance sickly and unpromising. Can we wonder if the victim of 
circumstances becomes a thief or drowns himself in the cold, dark 
waters ? ' ' 

Read next the following from a newspaper published in California, 
speaking against its own State and city, the land of gold where the irre- 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. II 

deemable greenback does not come. The San Francisco Mail says: 
" The unvarnished truth is that our labor market is stocked to overflow- 
ing, and every fresh arriving train but adds to the miserable multitude 
in our midst, that awaits, suffers, starves, and finally fights its desperate 
way back East again. Before the door of every employment ofrlce in 
this city to-day stands a hollow-eyed swarm that would sadden the heart 
of a satyr. Men of brains and culture, good clerks, excellent account- 
ants, business men of undeniable energy, mechanics of ability, walk the 
streets in dumb despair, and finally take those that lead to the bay and 
the morgue. It is truly said that San Francisco is California, and here 
all the misery and suffering of those who have journeyed from afar to 
grasp in monotonous repetition the glittering mirage of fortune, are seen. 
The writer of this cannot remember one evening for very many that he has 
not been asked for coin to buy a meal or a bed, by men who would 
sooner have died on the rack than have asked alms in the light of the 
day. And some of them do die on the rack — the rack of continued 
disappointment and bitter misery." 

Nor is this half of the sad reality. In the Southern States the condi- 
tion is worse. In the State of Nebraska and other States the farms are 
being mortgaged for five years, more or less, at rates of interest of from 
15 to 25 per cent, per annum, to Eastern or European capitalists. Even 
the city of New York has increased its indebtedness $28, 000, 000 in the 
year of 1876, and its total debt is #145,000,000. Debts are increasing 
on every hand, while all over the country the price of property, farms 
and real estate especially, is going down. Farming and all country, as 
well as city, labor pays poorly and is very precarious in its employment 
and return of profits. Beyond all dispute, a sickly stupor reigns over all 
industrial employments throughout the United States. For years we 
have been told that times were beginning to improve, or about to ; but 
they don't improve in anything but increase of debts with diminished 
means to pay, with more and still more unemployed labor in all the 
States, and increased suffering of men, women and children, and bank- 
ruptcy also greatly increasing. 

American laborers, see how exactly opposite is the condition of labor 
in this country from what it is in France. If you please, do not pass 
over this subject without tracing the contrast between the condition of 
labor in this country and France as shown by the foregoing extracts, and 
in fact by all other reliable evidence on the subject. 



12 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 



CHAPTER III. 



WHY THIS DIFFERENCE IN THE CONDITION OF LABOR 

BETWEEN FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES 

AND GERMANY. 



If the condition of labor was in France what it is here, and here what 
it is in France, then we would all agree as to the cause. We would say 
it was on account of the overcrowded condition of the old country, and 
the ample room and resources of this new country. But what can we 
say as to the cause when the prosperity is in the old country and the 
prostration in the new? What causes the difference now? We are told 
by many when they are compelled to speak of it at all, that the difference 
is in the people ; and that Americans are extravagant and lazy. I say 
the difference is in the laws. In every particular other than the laws of 
the two countries, we are better situated and qualified for prosperity 
than the French people. Our natural resources are vastly superior to 
those of France, and our people more enterprising and hardy than the 
French ; and those who have set on foot this scandal about the extrava- 
gance and laziness of the American people deserve to be kicked by 
American laborers from American shores. The men who have set 
on foot this scandal are the very drones and vampires who have insti- 
gated the passage of laws that rob labor for their own benefit, and to 
cover up their own villainy, and keep the people from finding out the 
real cause of their distress, they cry lazy, extravagant American people. 
Surely our laboring people are not extravagant ; and if there be any 
marks of laziness or shiftlessness about them, it is because the best of 
them are robbed. Open up the way for them to work for reward by 
proper laws, as is done in France, and very soon, would their laziness 
and shiftlessness forsake them, if they have any, and the whole country 
would be born into new life, activity and virtue. 

Who is right about this? Is it the American people or the laws that 
are wrong ? It is high time this point was settled. If it is the people, they 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 1 3 

should know it for certain and reform themselves. If it be the laws, 
then American laborers should not allow this scandal to be repeated with 
impunity any longer, much less should they repeat it themselves, as many 
of them do. Nay more, they should go directly at work in a straight 
forward business way, and find out exactly what is wrong with the laws, 
demand their correction, and then prosper like Frenchmen, only more 
so, and on a grander scale, which they might and would do. 

The difference cannot be in any matter of indebtedness, or lack of 
resources for gold and silver on our part. France merged from her war 
only half as long ago as this country did from hers, and under circum- 
stances of much greater financial difficulty. France has no mines of 
gold or silver, while we have the richest in the world. Yet having paid 
her war debt to Germany of $1,000,000,000, in gold, she now has seven 
times as much specie in her country as we have in ours — probably eight 
times as much. 

What then causes the difference of prosperity ? Just this, the French 
government keeps her available labor all employed — a matter that this 
government pays no attention to — and labor does everything, and brings 
every good. And the way France keeps her available labor employed, 
is by keeping about two and a half times as much money in circulation 
per capita, or according to population, as this government does. This 
is the secret of the whole matter. We know this is all the material differ- 
ence there is against us, because for a short time after the close of our 
war in 1865-6 we had about the same ratio of money as France keeps 
afloat, and then we prospered as she does now. We had no tramps. 
Our people were all at work. We then paid ten times as much national 
debt in a year as we do now, and felt it not a tenth part as much. We 
are told by the anti-labor or moneyed men, and even many of us are 
made to believe it, that the reason our industries have become so pros- 
trate, is because we got so much in debt during the war. What sort of 
idea is this ? Had to stop work because we got in debt ! Why, sir, if 
we are in debt we need to work all the more, instead of less. Work is 
what pays debts, and idleness creates and increases them. And the 
men who are trying to quiet our fears by this kind of talk are the 
men that are aiming to get us hopelessly in debt to them, that we may 
be their slaves forever. 

According to statistics, nearly all of which are taken from the 
reports of Secretary of the Treasury and the Treasurer of the United 
States for 1865, we had outstanding currency on June 30, 1865, as 
follows : 



14 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

Old demand notes $ 472,603.50 

Legal tender notes, greenbacks (newissue) 431,066,427.99 

Compound interest notes, legal tender 191,121,470.00 

One and two year notes of 1863 16,183,520.00 

Two year coupon notes of 1863 34,441,650.00 

Fractional currency 25,033,128.76 

7-30 bonds (legal tender excluding interest), . . . . 829,992,500.00 

Legal tender 5 per cents 32,036,091.00 

Temporary loan certificates 107,148,713.00 

Three per cent, certificates 85,993,000.00 

National bank notes 171,000,000.00 

State bank notes 78,867,575.00 

Total $2,003,356,679.25 

The above was the currency of the country outstanding June 30, 
1865, not counting near $100,000,000 more that was at that time in the 
treasury of the United States. 

And now all the above has been withdrawn from circulation except 
the legal tenders, greenbacks, national bank notes, and fractional cur- 
rency, amounting in all to some $700,000,000 in round numbers. 

Only about one-third as much now as we had in 1865. In the last 
twenty years there has been but a brief period, during the latter part of 
the war and for two or three years or thereabouts afterward, embracing 
about four years in all, that we have had a supply of currency at all cor- 
responding to that of France ; and that brief period is all the time of 
high financial and industrial prosperity that we have had in that twenty 
years. The number of bankruptcies, and a corresponding prostration of 
the labor interests, have kept pace with the contraction of the currency. 
The following table furnished by the commercial agency of Dun, Barlow 
& Co., showing the number of bankruptcies and amount of each for the 
last twenty years, is very interesting and instructive to study. It com- 
mences with the year 1857, in which occurred a terrible crisis in money 
matters, caused by the failure of the specie promises, called specie basis, 
or bank note currency. It will be noticed that the number of bank- 
ruptcies in any year is a better index to the financial condition of the 
country than their amount. 

YEAR. NO. OF FAILURES. AMOUNT. 

l8 57 4>93 2 $291,750,000 

l8 5 8 4,225 95,749,000 

l8 59 3>9 X 3 64,394,000 

i860 3,676 79,807,000 

1861 6,993 207,210,000 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY* 1$ 

1862 . 1,652 23,049,300 

1863 485 6,864,700 

1864 520 8,579,000 

1865 530 17,625,000 

1866 632 47,333,000 

1867 2,386 86,218,000 

1868 2,6o8. . . » 63,774,000 

1869 2,799 75>°54,°oo 

1870 3,551 88,242,000 

1871 2,915 85,252,000 

1872 4,069 121,056,000 

1873 5> l8 3 228,499> 000 

1874. 5> 8 3° i55> 2 39>°°° 

1875 7>74o 201,060,353 

1876 9,092 191,117,786 

1877 (First three months) . . . 2,869 

Here are two evidences that all that gives the French people pros- 
perity so vastly superior to ours is, that they have about two and a-half 
times as much money per capita as we have. First, because this greater 
supply of money is the only thing wherein they have any advantages 
over us ; and second, because the exact time of about three or four years 
in the last twenty years, wherein we had a supply of money per capita 
approximating theirs, is the only time in that twenty years wherein we 
had prosperity approximating theirs. If our financial and industrial 
stagnations are caused by the laziness and extravagance of our people, as 
money dealers say is the case, then is it not strange that just for the time 
of about three or four years, that we had what might be called a French 
supply of money in respect to quantity, that laziness and extravagance 
left our people, and returned upon them again just so soon and just so 
fast as the money supply was withdrawn. The year 1861, in which the 
war broke out, and when the specie promises, or bank note money, 
nearly all failed, causing probably the greatest scarcity of money ever 
known in the country, is marked, as shown in the above table, with the 
greatest number of bankruptcies ever before known. 

I beseech you, laborer, not to pass lightly over these tables and 
evidences, but study them closely ; because this question, as to what 
causes the wonderful labor prosperity in France, and what causes the 
labor prostration in this country, are the two great questions that al! 
laboring people should feel a deep interest in. Does it not look from 
the above evidences that all further talk or writing or printing about lazy 
and extravagant American people, and also about too much money, or a 
plenty of money, should be stopped ? It is utterly false, and designed to 
injure labor for the benefit of a moneyed aristocracy. 



1 6 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

Perhaps the reader would like to know what was done with all that 
vast amount of currency, some fourteen hundred millions, that was with- 
drawn. It was mostly funded into bonds, payable as to principal in 
lawful paper money or greenbacks. Then by an act of repudiation of 
March 18, 1869, they were declared payable in coin; and since then a 
large share of them, or of other bonds issued in lieu, have been need- 
lessly sold in the foreign market. Thus has our currency, which was to 
us the life blood of business and labor, been taken from us and converted 
into gold bonds, to create an artificial demand for gold, and take the 
gold out of the country for the benefit of both foreign and home money 
capitalists. 

It is fitting to observe that none of the above currency, circu- 
lating in 1865, as mentioned on page 14, was as good as the French 
paper currency, because it was not a full legal tender, as the French 
paper money is. And all except the greenbacks, fractional currency and 
bank notes was still more objectionable in form, because of being itself 
interest bearing. But these interest bearing securities served in some 
measure as currency in some spheres of business, or as bank reserves in 
the place of money ; and were as to principal, but not the interest on 
them, nearly all legal tenders like the greenback money. So we see 
from all this, that even in times of our prosperity at the close of the war 
and afterward, our currency in its form was irregular and burdened with 
some objections. Yet its quantity gave us prosperity. 

As a further evidence that it was this irredeemable legal tender 
paper money that gave and still gives France such wonderful prosperity, 
it should be known and borne in mind that Germany, having received 
from France this great war fine of #1,000,000,000, all in gold or gold 
exchange, which is the same thing, yet by pursuing a specie basis policy 
similar to that of the United States, has prostrated her industry in a 
manner to some extent the same as is done in this country. So that 
after all, Germany having been led into this specie basis policy all the 
more intensely by having received such an immense gold payment, has 
been injured by it far more than benefited. Germany, however, is acting 
more wise than the United States by making greater efforts to retrieve 
herself from the terrible disaster. 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 1 7 

CHAPTER IV. 



LET US NOT FALL OUT YET. 



Fellow laborer, it is quite probable that as yet you are not prepared 
to agree with me in some of my conclusions. But I do not fall out with 
you for this, and beg of you not to fall out with me > but keep on read- 
ing, and I think we will agree in all material points before coming to the 
close of our book. I have many other things to advance in support of 
my views. And if you please keep steadily in view that I propose to 
show that you, and all the millions of other laborers in this country, can 
have prosperity equal to that of the French laborers, as shown on page 
9, and in some respects superior. And further, that we can have this 
prosperity all the time and everywhere in this country. And this being 
my proposal, such is the immense consequence to yourself, your country- 
men, and to your children, if perchance I should prove my proposition 
true, as I am sure it is true, that it ought to be of intense interest to 
you, to read this little work to the end, if there be a possibility that I 
will show this, or even put you in the way to find my proposition true 
from other sources. 

And further, I have presented some figures and statistics. These 
and some other propositions or topics that I will present for a few pages 
'to come, may not strike you as being very interesting, and yet they may. 
But in any event I pray you not to weary, or pass them over without full 
and careful reading. This will pay in the end. 



CHAPTER V. 



WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT TO HAVE MONEY PLENTY? 



Money is the medium by which the productions of labor are taken 
from the hand of the producer and transferred or distributed to the 
thousands needing them for use all over the country, and the world it 
may be ; and likewise are brought back to this same producer the 
productions of thousands of other producers from different parts of the 

2 



1 8 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

country, and the world, for his benefit and use. The agency of money 
in this gathering and distributing the productions of labor is subtile and 
indispensable beyond the power of the mind to conceive. 

If, therefore, the money of the country be unjustly limited in its 
amount, or disturbed in its evenness of supply, as is done by our govern- 
ment, then those who traffic in it will monopolize it, so as to result in 
such a tariff on this business of distributing of the products of labor as is 
likely to absorb all profits, both of production as well as distribution, 
and perhaps more. So that the productions of each laborer accumu- 
lates on his own hands, and finally his business not being on a paying 
basis forces him into bankruptcy; or, perhaps, he suspends business 
and goes into bankruptcy for the want of a business to support him. 
Thus each producer in the whole round of productive occupations fam- 
ishes for the want of a proper supply of the productions of all the others. 

That is our condition to-day. Here are soil, sunshine, rain, timber 
in the forest, coal and iron in the earth, and all the natural resources in 
great profusion, far superior to those in France. Here are also men in 
vast numbers yearning to use these natural resources in the production 
of food, clothing, buildings and implements for labor and business 
amongst men ; and here also are multitudes famishing for the want of 
these very things, and yet it will not pay to produce them in any 
adequate degree. The labor must be idle, the natural resorces must be 
untouched or imperfectly utilized, and men, women and children must 
famish and perish even, simply because money, the medium of distribu- 
tion, is under tribute, levied by the extortioners who are bred into 
existence by unjust money laws. And yet amidst all this, the money 
dealers, in order to cover up their trickery, cry overproduction and too 
much money. What a cold blooded mockery of human sufferings, 
created by the mockers themselves ! 



CHAPTER VI. 



IMPORTANT, INDISPENSABLE AND UNIVERSAL AGENCY 

OF MONEY. 



Perhaps this title is not unavoidably necessary, in order to a practi- 
cal understanding of the great and important historical facts and princi- 
ples which I shall hereafter present, but yet, it will enrich the mind on 
our subject, and seems to me will be highly interesting, to consider for 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 1 9 

a moment how wonderfully important, indispensable, subtle and univer- 
sal is the agency and power of money in all affairs of civilized commu- 
nities. 

Take a common table knife, with which one places food in his or 
her mouth. To say nothing of the handle, the blade of this simple 
instrument is made from ore, dug from the earth with tools made of 
metal, hauled to a furnace in a wagon, drawn by a harnessed team, 
smelted, and passed through a variety of transformations, in its refine- 
ment and shaping into the knife blade ; and besides all these things, 
there is the clothing and food that sustained the laborers while perform- 
ing the work in all its varied stages, and likewise probably many sales 
of the article, and transportations in steamboats and over railroads, both 
before and after its completion. 

The tools with which the ore was dug, the wagon in which it was 
hauled, the team, the harness, the furnace, the other instruments and 
machinery by which the refining and shaping was done, the clothes and 
food of the workmen, each boat, vessel, and railroad by which the arti- 
cle was transported; each and every one of these things, was itself 
created through the subtile agency of money, operating in a vast variety 
of places, and infinitude of details, bringing in some cases the necessary 
materials together from the very ends of the earth, so to speak. 

If to the making and furnishing of a table-knife, money contributes 
in such an endless variety of ways and details, then how indispensably 
important and operative must it be in the preparation of any man with 
the tools, buildings and other things, for a business occupation, and 
then, likewise, the carrying on of the business itself? 

And do not these things suggest one thing more, namely, that inas- 
much as money has so intimately and so inseparably to do with all the 
affairs of civilized communities, and in the production and distribution 
of almost everything that the individuals thereof touch, taste or handle, 
the destinies of such communities for weal or woe may depend absolutely 
upon certain things respecting the qualities and quantity of the money 
that have not been hitherto understood by the great mass of any commu- 
nity; thereby laying the masses liable to be crushed or terribly oppressed 
through the evil designs or the ignorance of rulers ? I affirm that this 
not only may be so, but is so. Nay more, I expect to show to the unbi- 
ased mind by this little work, that the condition of labor, the disposition 
of its profits and proceeds, the morality, intelligence, happiness, loyalty, 
peace and order of the people, purity and integrity of the government, 
genuineness and sincerity of religion, and the very existence of republi- 
can government itself in these United States, depends upon two simple 



20 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

principles of our money, to wit, its quality and quantity. And the 
reason why these two principles of our money are so important to be 
rightly adjusted is, because upon them depends the condition of labor, 
and upon the condition of labor depends our destiny for weal or woe, in 
all the particulars above mentioned, agreeably to the lines on the title 
page of this work. 



CHAPTER VII 



HOW DID THE FRENCH PEOPLE GET SO MUCH SPECIE ? 



A few pages back, it was remarked that France has seven times as 
much specie in her country as we have in ours. When that statement 
was read, I would not wonder if the reader said within himself: Ah ! I 
see the author's error. That accounts, the reader may say or think, for 
France having more money than we have in this country, because she 
has the specie to base it on. Perhaps the reader may reason thus on the 
subject : When this country acquires seven times as much specie as she 
now has, then we also can easily have two and a-half times as much 
currency or money as we now have, and then prosper like France, and 
not before. This kind of theorizing is in accordance with all our educa- 
tion, as we have received it from high official sources, from the news- 
papers and school books in general. But France reverses this order of 
things. France says money first, and that stimulates labor, from labor 
comes production, production furnishes things for export as well as to 
live on and use at home, export creates foreign balances, and foreign 
balances necessarily bring gold or specie, because the paper money of one 
nation is not received as permanent payment in any other nation, nor 
need it be. On the other hand, our government says, specie first to base 
currency on, then currency, and after that labor may prosper. The 
above statement that foreign balances must be paid in gold or specie 
certainly will not be objected to by the hard money men, so called, for 
with them it is a dogma. And certainly it is a truth that comes in 
course in our argument as much as it can in theirs. Stated more briefly, 
the French theory is, first money, then labor, then gold or specie. The 
American or British theory is, first specie, then currency based on it, 
then labor. The French theory makes specie the last in the order ; the 
American makes specie the first. The French theory makes labor bring 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 21 

specie, which is in accordance with the lines on our title page, that 
when labor prosper well, then all things right do prosper, which of 
course includes financial prosperity. The American or British theory, 
on the other hand, stops labor to get specie to base the currency on ; in 
theory, therefore, making specie bring labor, instead of labor bring 
specie. 

The French theory is the true one ; it is in accord with reason and 
the experience of nations, of which that of France furnishes a most emi- 
nent example. Hence her great supply of specie. As stated by Henry 
Cary Baird, the eminent political economist, upon his return from 
France to this country in May 1876, the French people have amongst 
them $1,250,000,000 of specie, and it is there paid out and received in 
business matters, indiscriminately with the paper money of the country. 
Whilst in this country, with a population twenty-five per cent, greater 
than that of France, we have according to the best authority only about 
$160,000,000 of specie, and it does not circulate as money proper 
scarcely at all. And this too, in the face of the fact that France has no 
gold or silver mines to speak of, while our mines are the richest in the 
world, and all our resources for acquiring gold and silver and everything 
else are greatly superior to those of France. And this is also in the face 
of the further fact that France has recently paid to Germany a war debt 
of $1,000,000,000, all in gold, or gold exchange, which is the same 
thing. 

American laborer, is not this a most striking lesson ? Well, what I 
propose to show you, if you read this book carefully to the end, is that 
this lesson has a most immediate and powerful bearing upon your pocket, 
your finances, your condition in life, and everything that is dear to you ; 
and that it apeals to you personally and powerfully for action, immediate, 
well directed action in your own interest and that of your country. 

If this country gets short of specie it contracts its paper money cir- 
culation, prostrates its productive labor, thereby driving specie more 
from our shores, and cries out bitterly for specie to base its currency on. 
If France should get short of specie, or even loose every grain of gold 
and silver she has, instead of contraction she would enlarge her paper 
money issue to take the place of her lost specie, and her industries or 
productive labor would move on prospering just as they now do exactly. 
Of course her exports would keep up, and gold and silver would keep 
pouring in upon her, and very soon she would have an abundance of 
specie again. The difference between the French and American the- 
ries is just the difference between suiting the money of the country 
to the labor interests, and suiting it to the anti-labor interests, that is to 



22 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

the interests of money dealers and sharpers at the sacrifice of the labor 
interests, and to a great extent to the sacrifice of labor itself. 

Laborer, do you not think the French theory is right and sound, 
and the American terribly wrong as against labor, and unsound ? And 
if the French theory be right, then, pray what has been the need of all 
this prostration of labor into the dust, this increasing bankruptcy, and 
this wholesale starvation, languishing and death that has been growing 
upon us for years past? If this French theory is right, and I affirm it 
is, then this book is right throughout. And if this French theory is not 
right, then this book is nonsense from beginning to end, and I am a 
fool for having written it. I stake everything upon this point. If I am 
wrong in this one point, then for aught anything I know we are governed 
rightly and justly, and labor is not unnecessarily oppressed and bur- 
dened, and there is no help for us except by repudiation. But if I am right 
in this one point here made, then I am not a fool altogether, nor is this 
book nonsense ; but on the contrary, all the principal finance and money 
laws passed by the Congress of this great nation in the last eleven years, 
yea, all the principal finance and monetary recommendations that have 
been made by our chief ministers of finance, the President and Secretary 
of the Treasury, in all that time, have been nonsense or something much 
worse, and whatever it be, whether nonsense or villainy, it has prostra- 
ted and crippled labor, the great source of all wealth and prosperity and 
the bestower of every good, and has thereby brought untold and needless 
suffering and wrong upon the country ? 

To show how careful the government of France is to watch the labor 
of that country and see that the volume of money is constantly graded 
so as to keep it employed, the following facts and figures are here given 
on the authority of Henry Cary Baird at his return from France in May, 
1876: 

The Bank of France, from which the paper money of that country 
is issued, suspended specie payments by authority of law in September, 
1870, with a circulation then of $250,000,000, and has not been required 
to pay specie since. By October 31, 1873, tne circulation was increased 
to $602,000,000, for the most part the period between these dates being 
the time the gold resources of the country were drawn upon to pay the 
war fine to Germany. By June 25, 1874, the paper currency had been 
contracted $107,000,000, leaving only $495,000,000 circulation. Like- 
wise in the same time the specie circulation had diminished $90,000,000. 
This sharp contraction was found to be too great, bringing severe 
paralysis of labor and business, at Paris especially. An expansion was 
therefore immediately commenced and kept up until December 31, 1874, 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 23 

when the paper money had been increased $62,000,000, and the specie 
$81, 700,000. And prosperity was fully restored. Thus it is seen the 
French government watches her labor interests and promotes them, 
instead of destroying them with crafty theories in the interest of money 
dealers. 

As I stake everything upon the one point heretofore mentioned, 
then come on ye wise men in the money interest, and attack me here. 
Show my error in this one thing, and demolish me and my little book, 
and rid the country of one of those productions you call crazy on finance. 
And take notice now what the point is. It relates to the manner of 
making specie plenty in any country. You, yourselves of the opposi- 
tion, must, according to your own theory, regard this as the vital point, 
or at least one of the vital points of the whole controversy ; because you 
say that specie is necessary to base currency on, and the one great para- 
mount desire, or pretended desire rather, of this government and of all 
you bullion croakers, during all these years of financial and industrial 
disaster, has been to get specie into the country to base the currency on, 
or in other words, so as to come to specie payments. You say the right 
way to get specie into the country is to contract the paper money circu- 
lation and get it down to a specie basis, as you call it, because you say 
this irredeemable paper money is an evil, and drives the specie away out 
of the country. I say that what you call the irredeemable paper money 
evil is the mainspring of prosperity, and the very thing that brings gold 
and silver into the country and makes specie abundant ; and for this 
simple reason, that it puts the labor into active, profitable employment. 
Of course there must be a just measure of supply of paper money. But 
your rule of supply is false and ruinous, and defeats the getting of specie 
into the country, and defeats every other good thing. Your rule is to 
contract in order to come to a specie basis, and of course it means the 
less specie there is in the country, the less paper currency there must be. 
We say if there is a lacking of specie, there must be the more paper 
money, instead of less, so as to keep up the regular supply of money in 
actual circulation, and thus keep the industries constantly employed and 
protect them from extortion. 

At the time France made the first payment on her great gold war 
debt to Germany in 1871, the paper money of France fell from par to 
2^ per cent, below. In such a case, according to the American wise 
men,, a contraction of paper currency would have been commenced at 
once so as to bring it to par. But France took the opposite course. She 
authorized the issue of four hundred millions of francs more of paper 
money, additional to the then limit, which was 2,400,000,000 francs, 



24 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

whereupon the premium fell to i per cent. Still another four hundred 
millions of francs was authorized to be issued, whereupon the premium 
on gold in a short time disappeared altogether. Then having paid off 
her war debt to Germany in three years time, and her gold resources 
no longer being drawn upon, specie money has been accumulating in 
France for the most part ever since, and as specie accumulates she with- 
draws her paper money. She has some #1,250,000,000 of specie, and 
more than twice as much specie as paper money, according to the infor- 
mation of Hon. Henry Gary Baird, in May, 1876. Why is all this? Why 
this contrast between France and this country? Why has France this 
vast superabundance of specie, while we with vastly superior advantages 
for getting and keeping it are so destitute of it, and keep up such a pitiful 
howl for it. The direct and short answer to all this is: because France 
eyes her industries and keeps her available labor all in continual and 
profitable employment, making all theories and all interests bend to this 
one thing as the highest object of concern ; while in this country the 
government does not stoop to notice so insignificant a thing as the inter- 
ests of labor really is, but eyes well the interests of the powerful creditor 
classes, bankers, brokers, bondholders, money lenders, purchasers at 
bankrupt sales, and gold gamblers ; and the little simple thing called 
labor, to which the world owes everything, is left helpless, to be crushed 
and ground between the upper and nether millstones — the wealthy 
creditor class being the upper, and the government the nether. 



CHAPTER VIII 



OBJECTIONS ANSWERED— PERMANENCE OF PROSPERITY- 
THE RESUMPTION LAW— INFLATION IN FRANCE— 
AND BASIS OF HER PAPER MONEY. 



As I have staked everything on the soundness of this French method 
of making specie plenty, I must notice several points where I know from 
the habits of the opposition attacks will be made, unless I fortify those 
points with a little truth in advance. 

It is said this French prospericy, stimulated with irredeemable paper 
money, will do for temporary and extraordinary occasions, but will soon 
exhaust itself* To this I reply that it is the only theory that does not 
in practice exhaust itself. It is the only theory that will be permanent in 
the prosperity that it imparts. Its results / if they are anything at all that 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 25 

I have endeavored to show, savor of the most permanent character in 
every particular. As I have shown, ^- is the way to acquire specie and 
make it plenty in the country ; and' this, according to the idea of our 
American government rulers and the bullion advocates themselves, is of 
the very quintessence of permanence and substantiality. But this 
French theory, as I here call it for present convenience, not only brings 
gold and silver, but it increases all kinds of property. Food, raiment, 
houses, buildings, farm improvements, mine improvements, railroads, 
furnaces, forges, rolling mills, factories and other property and improve- 
ments of every kind ; because these things are the results or products of 
labor, and labor is the thing stimulated and fostered by this French 
system. Now every addition of this kind to the property of the country, 
being directed by private enterprise in the direction of practical wants 
and needs, is a permanent help to the country, because every advance of 
this kind lays the foundation for still further advances in the same direc- 
tion, or for the production of property through the use of these 
improvements and acquisitions. The result therefore in its main 
features is not only good but permanent. 

But, it is reported that France herself has passed a law to return to 
specie payments in 1878. I do not know whether this be so or not. 
And it is of no consequence in this argument whether it is or not. It is 
difficult to see that a law for specie payments could for the present have 
any visible effect, in a country where without any compulsory specie 
payments, the paper money and specie have for years been handled with 
the utmost indiscrimination, the paper money being substantially par, 
and specie more than twice as much in amount as the paper money. 

This one thing I do know however, that the example of this French 
system, has been very instructive to the laboring people of the world on . 
the subject of labor, and its interests and rights as connected with the prin- 
ciples of money. It is a powerful eye opener, in showing how labor is 
wont to be enslaved and robbed through fraudulent money systems. 
This being the case, the money craft of the world have for years had a 
terrible itching to have France adopt as a matter of form and colorable 
appearance at least, if nothing else, a law for specie payments. This is 
probably what has prompted the passage of this law; simply to blind 
the world. 

But further, even supposing that this French resumption law would 
have some effect, and suppose the effect would be the same there as simi- 
lar legislation has always had here and in all other countries including 
England, it argues nothing at all, because no future event of any kind, 
can take away the demonstration already clearly given to the world of 



26 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

the notorious, indisputable and permanent superiority of the present 
French theory. Whether the change to the forced specie payment sys- 
tem, was the result of mistake or fraud on the part of the rulers, it would 
not diminish the proofs already afforded by the present system, even if 
such change were made. 

But what about this inflation in France? In our country we are 
certainly told that it will not do to increase the money in circulation, 
because that will raise prices, and make the cost of manufacture and 
production so great that we cannot export, because the cost will be 
greater than, or equal to, the prices in the foreign market. But here is 
this country of France with money to amount of #1,730,000,000, accor- 
ding to Henry Cary Baird, while we have but $900,000,000 at most, 
counting specie and all, and the specie does not circulate here as it does 
in France ; and the French population being only four-fifths as much as 
our own, makes fully two and a half times as much money in circulation 
per capita in France as in this country. And yet, with this inflation, 
with money to be " had almost for the asking," as we see from the Paris 
'authority on page [9], specie money and paper money both alike cheap, 
France 1 nevertheless outrivals all other countries in competing with her 
goods in the foreign markets. And this, as we have already seen, 
makes her country more than any other the depository of the gold and 
silver of the world. 

American laborer, do not pass this point over slightly, I beseech 
you. A careful consideration of this one point itself, will show beyond 
the possibility of a doubt, that the political and governmental men who 
have instructed us and ruled us in this country for the last eleven years, 
have been either very ignorant of their business or something worse. 
Prices of labor and rent and real estate may indeed be high in France, 
we do not know how high, and it does not matter; money is cheap and 
the whole land and nation is saved from extortion, brokerage, gold gam- 
bling, and the bankrupt vampirism; this being the case, prices will take care 
of themselves. When men are protected in what is their own, and not 
robbed by the extortions and the ups and downs of prices and tricks of 
finance that sweep away estates as if but cob-webs, then they are able to 
make their calculations on a reliable basis, and will push ahead with 
business, adjusting all prices amongst themselves on a paying business 
scale, both for export and home consumption. Government has noth- 
ing to do with prices. It should protect all men from robbery and 
wrong. This is the peculiar appropriate province of government. 

Now how do the ruling men of France know how much money 
should be in circulation in that country? They know nothing at all 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 27 

about it only this, they know from close observation how much will keep 
the people all in profitable employment, and they gauge it by that rule. 
If our rulers would do that, instead of setting up their arbitrary theories, 
and ruining labor by these theories, we would prosper like France; our avail- 
able labor would all be constantly employed, we would not only compete 
mightily in foreign markets as France does, but would have much more 
to live on at home, and make the mass of our people far more comfort- 
able and happy. Even our domestic animals would feel a great change 
in matters of comfort, especially in the new States. 

But, in this discussion or French affairs, there is one question that 
probably has all the time been in the mind of the intelligent laborer, 
while reading some of the foregoing pages, as a difficulty not yet 
explained by me, and perhaps it is beginning to be feared that I cannot 
or will not attempt to explain it. But let there be no fears on this score. 
Every laborer that will have the kindness to pardon all my faults in 
style and shortcomings, both those that may be real, and also that may 
be only imaginary on his part, and peruse carefully these pages to the 
end, will, I think, find that I have fairly met every point, or at least hon- 
estly designed so to do; so as to show the plain road for our country 
out of oppression into freedom and great prosperity. The question 
above referred to involves the central idea of this wbvle subject of money. 
It is the very heart of the great mystery as many people regard it. 

The question is this. As I have already spoken of France procur- 
ing gold and silver by issuing paper money, so as to enliven her indus- 
tries, and as I have stated that the less specie she has the more paper 
money she issues, and that she would do this even if she had no specie 
at all in the country, the question arises, on what does she base the value 
of her paper money issued in this manner, having no specie, or an insuf- 
ficient amount of it, for such paper money basis ? And further, can 
paper money be so issued without a specie basis, so as to be reliable and 
permanent in value, and par with gold ? 

I here say it can, and France does it. And the examples of France 
and other countries show that just as good money, and just as much of 
it, can be furnished by the government of a country without specie as 
with. Indeed this theory of the moneyed and the creditor classes that 
the money of a country must depend upon the presence of specie or of 
gold or silver, is the most gigantic fraud ever practiced upon mankind, 
and has been the means of more legalized robbery of labor, and conse- 
quent suffering and starvation in the last few centuries, than all other 
frauds put together. France makes paper money, not specie promises 
merely, but paper money, and keeps it par, or of equal value with gold 



28 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

by simply making it a full legal tender for the payment of all debts within 
iher realm, the same as her gold coins. 

But as this question, in its full solution, resolves itself into the great 
central question of the whole subject of money, namely, what is the true 
basis of value to money ? I will not any further discuss or explain this 
question until I shall have given some more historical matter, so as to 
prove what I shall say, not only by the example of France but by those 
of England and the United States. Having done this, and followed it 
with a few lessons of comment, I will take up the question, what is the 
true basis of value to money ? and solve it in such manner that I sincerely 
hope and trust that I will not only be understood, but that every laborer 
who reads it will be fully satisfied with the solution, and fully concur 
with me ever after. I hope I may not be considered vain, when I say I 
have strong confidence that this will be the result. Let us not forget, 
however, that the money question, in no one of its phases, is of any con- 
sequence of itself. It is of consequence only as it comes necessarily in 
the way as we proceed in studying the labor question ; that is how to 
give labor its deserved reward, constant employment and prosperity. 
We will now turn our attention to English affairs. 



CHAPTER IX. 



LABOR PROSPERITY IN ENGLAND EIGHTEEN YEARS, 
FROM 1797 TO 1815. 



Sir Archibald Allison, author of the History of Modem Europe, says : 
"The next eighteen years of the war, from 1797 to 1815, were, as all the 
world knows, the most glorious, and taken as a whole, the most prosper- 
ous which Great Britain had ever known. Ushered in by a combination 
of circumstances the most calamitous, both with reference to external 
security and internal industry, it terminated in a blaze of glory and flood 
of prosperity which have never since the beginning of the world descen- 
ded upon any nation. Prosperity universal and unheard of pervaded 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 29 

every part of the empire. Our colonial possessions encircled the earth : 
the whole West India Islands had fallen into our hands; an empire of 
sixty millions of men in Hindostan, acknowledged our rule ; Java was 
added to our Eastern possessions ; and the flag of France had disap- 
peared from every station beyond the sea. Agriculture, commerce and 
manufactures at home had increased in an unparalleled ratio ; the landed 
proprietors were in affluence ; wealth to an unheard of extent had been 
created among the farmers ; the soil, daily increasing in fertility and 
breadth of cultivated lands, had become almost adequate to the main- 
tenance of a rapidly increasing population , our exports, imports and 
tonnage had more than doubled since the war began." 

What caused this prosperity ? Exactly the same thing in kind that 
causes the present French prosperity. This eighteen years of English 
prosperity, commenced in 1797, when the Bank of England was author- 
ized by the government to suspend specie payment, and continued just so 
long as it was not insisted upon by any party that the bank should be 
required to pay specie, and ceased immediately as soon as that require- 
ment was seriously urged. The money of England during that eighteen 
years was irredeemable paper money ; it was rag baby in its nature. The 
very kind of money that the ministers of finance in our country tell us is 
a sore evil to have. True, like our present greenback money, it was 
inferior to the French paper money, because it was not a full legal ten- 
der for all debts in the country. Of course then it depreciated some in 
value as compared to gold, and did not have that full and complete 
beneficial effect, in dispensing its benefits to all interest, and to every- 
body as it otherwise would, and as the French money does. But like 
the French money in one respect it was not redeemable in specie on 
demand, and hence it could be and was issued in quantities for the most 
part to adapt itself to the necessities of labor and business. Take notice 
American laborers that this period of English prosperity lasted just 
the eighteen years of time that the money of England was not disturbed 
by redeemability in specie, nor seriously threatened so to be, and not 
any longer. So that English experience and French experience as to 
what causes prosperity accord one with the other, and they both are to 
the effect that prosperity comes at once, upon the liberation of the 
money or currency of the country from being redeemed in specie, and 
then issued in quantities suited to put the labor of the country all into 
active and profitable employment. 

And take notice, also, just what kind of prosperity that was. It 
was the prosperity of labor ; all honest, useful labor. It was "prosper- 
ity universal and unheard of," and it "pervaded in every part of the 



.3° kY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

empire ?" It was not the prosperity of a few vampires growing fat upon 
her double, treble or quadruple interest, or on the ruins of bankrupted 
estates. In its universal embrace and regard for all men it was godlike, 
and not devilish with partiality. " Agriculture, commerce and manu- 
factures at home had increased in an unparalleled ratio." And take 
notice, American farmers, the landed proprietors were in affluence, and 
wealth to an unheard of extent had been created among the farmers. 

And here is another thing that I desire to call the attention of 
American farmers to, especially our farmers here in Nebraska, who say 
that money reform would not scop the grasshoppers from coming nor 
make our lands yield any better. The historian farther says that ' ' the 
soil daily increasing in fertility and breadth of cultivated lands, had 
become almost adequate to the maintenance of a rapidly increasing 
population." Money reform may not stop grasshoppers from coming 
nor change the weather or seasons, but it will give the farmer his own 
earnings, and thereby enable him with the proper means to meet the 
peculiar casualties of his region, and enable him successfully to farm 
almost anywhere. There is no region so free from injurious casualties, 
as that the farmer does not need his own, in order to make farming a 
success. The form of expression in the last quotation, is based on the 
fact that before that time England's population had been to a great 
extent fed by manufactures exchanged in commercial transactions for 
food. But now, money reform had not only increased manufactures, 
but rendered the yield of the lands so much greater, that they almost 
maintained her population, rapidly increasing though it was. 

And now there is one thing more to which I desire to call especial 
attention. The historian further says: "Our exports, imports, and 
tonnage had more than doubled since the war began. ' ' Our wise men 
who are over us in the affairs of the American government, and other 
instructors controling school instruction and newspapers, say that the 
currency of a country must be redeemable in specie, otherwise we cannot 
get specie when we want it, and foreign commerce cannot be success- 
fully carried on. But see here how quickly was the foreign commerce of 
England more than doubled when that same redeemability of the 
English paper money was done away with. Laborer, let me tell you, 
that in the main principles of finance the truth lies exactly in the 
opposite direction from that pointed out by those whom we have in 
times past looked to for knowledge. We must begin to make our own 
observations of things, and exercise our own minds, and have our own 
standards of truth, from which no authority of newspapers, stump 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 3 1 

orators, school teachers, school books, or government dignitaries can 
sway us. 

By all means let the laborers of this country, each and all of them, 
not be content until they have settled in their own minds this inquiry, 
whether there be in the nature of the case, any reason why in this 
country we may not have just as great prosperity as that of England for 
nearly the eighteen years as above recorded. I affirm that there is not. 
It only needs to have our currency liberated from the fiction and fraud 
of gold and credit dealers and established upon the truth, and that 
measure of English prosperity, or the present French prosperity, if it be 
preferable, will come to us as readily and as certainly as that the rising 
of the sun will dispel the darkness of night. I am so certain of this, and 
so anxious for it, that I would readily stake my life upon it, if it were 
necessary and would animate my laboring countrymen to make the trial. 
My life is badgered by an inexpressible loathing of the lying theories 
that govern us in finances. I say that there is nothing existing in the 
times 01 season or place, or in our people, neither in the heavens above, 
or the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth, that makes it 
necessary for us to have in unwilling idleness or destitution a single 
able-bodied man or woman in all this vast country, nor to prevent us 
from coming right speedily to that high standard of prosperity above 
recorded by the English historian, attended, likewise, with as much 
greater grandeur and glory as the bestower of all good has granted us 
greater means and a more expansive heritage. 

And I say this also, that there was not in that English prosperity 
anything at all savoring of fiction, or wanting of substantiality. It was 
built on labor, and the labor stimulated by honest principles of finance 
that simply rewarded the laborer instead of robbing him. If those 
principles had been followed up and perfected, and kept alive in the 
laws of the country, instead of being supplanted by fraud and fiction, as 
they afterward were, that prosperity would have lasted to this day, and 
would last as much longer as the true principles might be preserved. 
And so in our own country, we cannot only have that prosperity, but we 
can establish it upon principles that shall make it enduring, and that is 
the business of the true men of this generation. 

Why was it that just in that eighteen years of war England author- 
ized her national banking institution to suspend specie payments and 
issue money in quantities suited to the industrial and commercial wants 
and prosperity? It was because Napoleon was then pressing her by his 
military power, and the very existence of the government and nation 
itself required all the resources of the nation to be brought into active 



32 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

use for its defense, suspending for the time being the avaricious gains of 
the moneyed nobility. As stated above by the historian, this eighteen 
years was " ushered in by a combination of circumstances the most 
calamitous, both with reference to external security and internal indus- 
try." Think of it. All this prosperity came, not by favored circum- 
stances, but in spite of circumstances, external and internal, the most 
calamitous ; all simply through the power of honesty and truth, in the 
money of the country. 

This eighteen years was a period of war. And amongst other 
abominable teachings of the money and credit craft to explain away the 
real cause of the prosperity, it has been said that the war Was what 
caused the prosperity. This is opposed to common sense, and is cer- 
tainly fully answered by saying that the war commenced long before the 
bank suspension, but the difficulties, financial and otherwise, increased 
upon the country, until the bank suspension, and then commenced the 
prosperity. 

But in 1 815, the war closed by the capture of Napoleon at Waterloo. 
The scourge of war now being removed, it seems to have been thought, 
that the country could endure without entire destruction, a scourge far 
worse than war; and the Shylocks, with Sir Robert Peel at their head, or 
as an associate, began to insist seriously upon a law for resumption of 
specie payments. And then what took place ? 



6REAT ANt) LASTING PROSPERITY. 33 



CHAPTER X. 



THE TERRIBLE LABOR OPPRESSION OF ENGLAND FROM 
1815 TO 1825— THE BRITISH RESUMPTION LAW OF 
1 81 9— OUR OWN RESUMPTION LAW SIMILAR 
—ALLUSIONS TO CERTAIN MEN— LET- 
TER OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 



Let Thomas Doubleday in his financial, monetary and statistical 
history of England, tell what took place. He says : ''Prices fell on a 
sudden to a ruinous extent — banks broke — wages fell with prices of 
manufacturers; and before the year 181 6 had come to a close, panic, 
bankruptcy, riot and disaffection had spread through the land. Vast 
bodies of starving and discontented artisans now congregated together 
demanded reform of the parliament. The discontents, as usual, the 
government put down by an armed force. As the memorable first of 
May, 1823, drew near, the country bankers, as well as the Bank of Eng- 
land naturally prepared themselves by a gradual narrowing of their circu- 
lation for the dreaded hour of gold and silver payments on demand. * 
* * * The distress, ruin and bankruptcy which now took place were 
universal, effecting both the great interests of land and trade." 

Peel and his Shylock backers pressed the matter of the specie 
resumption law, and it was passed in 1819, requiring by its terms, specie 
payments to commence May 1st, 1823 — four years. Between the years 
1815 and 1825, inclusive, by the specie resumption law, and by the loss 
of confidence growing out of its pendency, more than four-fifths of the 
land owners of England lost their possessions. The number of land 
owners was reduced from 160,000 to 30,000. The very farmers that 
had accumulated wealth to an unheard of extent in the eighteen years of 
suspension, now became bankrupt and penniless. 

What was the matter here ? Did these thrifty English farmers all 
of a sudden become extravagant, and lazy, and shiftless, that caused 



34 by what Laws labor can sfcctrRE 

them to come to penury and want ? Not a bit of it. Neither have our 
people in the United States become extravagant, and lazy, and shiftless, 
as the cause of their great change of condition since 1865. The matter 
is, in my humble opinion, that if Robert Peel were alive to-day, he and 
one Hugh McCulloch, formerly our secretary of the treasury, and the 
original leading instigator of specie resumption villany in this country, 
but now an English, London, banker of great wealth, should both be 
hung together on one gibbet, as land pirates, outlaws and enemies of 
mankind ; and as many of their chief and most persistent coadjutors as 
are still alive, if not hung with them, ought at least to be excused from 
holding office again during their natural lives. This may be rather 
strong meat for some readers in the present early stage of their investi- 
gations into this great subject. Assertions having even the appearance 
of extravagance or want of candor, always weaken the argument of the 
one who makes them. The suitableness of the connection, therefore, 
must be my apology for making the above remark here, believing, as I 
do, that it is strictly true, as I hope to be able yet to show. 

Wendell Phillips, in a letter to the New York Legal Tender Club, 
dated August 23, 1875, though slightly inaccurate in two or three 
historical dates and some other forms of expression, draws a faithful 
sketch of this English resumption, as compared to our own now in 
progress but not completed. The following is an extract of the letter: 

" History is repeating itself. England never knew more prosperous 
years than from 1800 to 1820, during which she had neither gold nor 
wished to have it, nor promised to pay gold to any one whatever. All 
that while she extended and contracted her currency without any regard 
whatever to gold. Her enormous trade and expenditures were all paper, 
resting on credit and nothing else. We had similar prosperity during 
the war, and after on the same terms. In 1820, England, listening to 
theorists, tried to put this new wine into old bottles, and dragged her 
business back to methods a century old — to specie. Bankruptcy, the very 
history of which makes the blood cold to-day, blighted the empire. It 
took half a generation to recover from the mistake. No man can to-day 
begin to show that such suffering was necessary, that it achieved any 
good, or that it affected any change which could not have been as well 
made without it. 

We entered the same valley of the shadow of death when in 1865 
McCulloch began contraction. We are hurrying fast to England's 1820. 
Property sunk to half its former value ; the streets were crowded with 
unemployed men fast rotting into criminals; grass growing on the 
wharves, machinery rusting, poverty, starving. Woe to the political 



OREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 3$ 

party which the nation shall finally pronounce responsible for this fatal 
mistake ! Its leaders will be buried in curses, as men whom neither his- 
tory nor their own experience could make wise." 

But let us now return to consider more definitely the English specie 
resumption law and its disasters of 1815 to 1825, as already given in the 
foregoing extract from Doubleday's history and otherwise, on pages 
33 and 34. What, I ask, was all this for? When the country was pros- 
pering so wonderfully, why was not well enough let alone ? The specie 
resumption law was for the purpose of doing just what was done by it. 
The grand principle and intent underlying all British institutions and 
laws, is that a few men, a nobility, are to own the property of the coun- 
try and rule it, and the mass of the people are to do the work. Here 
was a great accumulation of wealth amongst the common people. It 
would not do. This wealth must needs be gathered up and handed over 
to the nobility. And no scheme for doing this could be found so effec- 
tual and delusive as the old time honored fraudulent pretense of forced 
specie payments without specie. Hence the haste that was made in the 
matter, as soon as the war closed, and in fact to a limited extent before. 
War is not a favorable condition of any country for accumulating specie, 
even with the best system of money ; because war uses up all foreign 
balances. Hence, as Mr. Wendell Phillips says in his letter, as appears 
in the above extract, during the war, from and after the time of suspen- 
sion, England "had neither gold nor wished to have it, nor promised to 
pay gold to any one whatever." Had the country of England been 
permitted to move on after the close of the war, with her money not fet- 
tered nor menaced by the specie payment fraud, and with her industries 
and commerce strengthened and enlarged as they surely would have 
been, instead of prostrated, she would have been acquiring specie, and 
the more specie in the country the less ruinous is the specie resumption 
business. No time was therefore to be lost ; the specie payment panic 
must be precipitated as early as possible after the war, so as to catch the 
country as much as possible without specie, in order the more effectu- 
ally to do its desired work, of transferring the people's property to the 
nobility. 

The object was not to have the paper currency redeemed in specie; 
there was really no desire or expectation of that ; but simply that the 
paper money be driven from circulation, by making this impossible 
requirement of specie payment in respect to it, thus leaving but very 
little currency in circulation of any kind, and forcing down prices of 
labor and property, real estate especially, to almost nothing, rendering 
debtors unable to pay their debts, that their estates might be bought in 



36 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

at forced sales, or voluntary to prevent the forced, at prices ruinous, and 
quite likely still leaving them in debt and without means to pay. 

The scheme worked like a charm. By it under the forms and sanc- 
tion of law, the property of the English people was gathered up in vast 
sweeping accumulations, and handed over to the nobility, and thus was 
the genius of British society, its distinction of nobility and vassalage, 
restored intact. 



CHAPTER XL 



WE HAVE A SIMILAR SCHEME NOW ON HAND IN THIS 
COUNTRY— DEMONETIZATION OF SILVER. 



The specie resumption law of this country, passed in January 1875, 
is in substance and design a copy of the British law of 1819, above 
mentioned. Bear in mind the excuse is to redeem the paper currency 
in specie, the real object is to drive from circulation the currency of the 
country, reduce prices, and so rob the debtor class. 

At the time our resumption law was on its passage the schemer hav- 
ing the bill in charge was inquired of if it was the design to take the 
legal tender greenback money out of circulation, or re-issue it when 
redeemed. He replied in substance, that that would depend on future 
events. Doubtless the dark meaning was that if the people could be 
deceived into the toleration of so villainous a measure as the retirement 
of the greenback money it would be done, otherwise not. 

During the late electioneering campaign we were told by old party 
politicians, that it was not the design of their respective parties to retire 
the greenback money from circulation. Some honest, independent, 
observing and thinking men, did not believe this. And now the late 
annual — December 1876 — report of the Secretary of the Treasury reveals 
unmasked the cloven foot of this resumption business. He says in his 
report : 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 37 

" As a further provision deemed essential to the purpose of resump- 
tion, it is recommended that in addition to the authority of the Secretary 
of the Treasury already conferred, * * * authority be given him 
from time to time as he may deem expedient, and as the state of the 
finances admit, to fund these notes (meaning the greenbacks) into a bond 
having a rate of interest not more than 4^ per cent., with not less than 
thirty years to run. * * * The present time is regarded as oppor- 
tune for the gradual withdrawal of these notes. It is believed they 
would not be greatly missed from the circulating medium, as their place 
will readily be supplied by the issue of national bank notes under this 
act." 

Can this be possible that upon the " withdrawal of the greenbacks 
from circulation their place will readily be supplied by the issue of 
national bank notes under this act/' that is the specie resumption act? 
If so, then we are ready to admit that this specie resumption law, or 
act, is not quite so bad a thing as some of us have thought. Bad enough 
indeed, at best, because the national banking system is a swindle and 
was so from the first, and the greenback or legal tender system of curren- 
cy is the more stable and reliable. 

But let us look at the matter. What will the national bank notes be 
redeemable in when the greenbacks are withdrawn and burned up? The 
bank notes must be redeemable in something, else they will be worthless, 
for they are not a legal tender for debt, as the greenback money is. At 
present the bank notes are redeemable in legal tender greenbacks, and 
that makes them good. But the greenbacks withdrawn and burned up, 
and then what ? Why the bank notes must then be redeemable in specie 
of course, as the resumption law provides. And where will the banks 
get the specie to redeem with. Some of the strongest of them will be 
able to get it, and continue their business. But it looks to us that the 
bank note circulation will be contracted instead of enlarged under the 
operation of this specie resumption law. Contraction has been the 
effect of it so far, and we have'every reason to believe it will be more and 
more so up to the time of resumption. The requirement to redeem in 
specie causes this. That was the effect in England as shown in the fore- 
going extract from Doubleday history. See page [33]. 

The contraction under our specie resumption law up to November 1, 
1876 was $30,710,732 of national banknotes, and $14,464,284 of green- 
backs, besides $20,910,946 more of greenbacks deposited in the treasury 
of the United States for the retirement of national bank notes, making a 
total contraction of the currency of $66,085,962 up to the date men- 
tioned, and the contraction and destroying of the greenback money is 



3 8 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

still going on. And yet the Secretary of the Treasury aforesaid had the 
brazen impudence to insult the intelligence of the nation, if it has any, 
by telling us in his high official report that if the greenbacks were with- 
drawn from circulation, national bank notes would readily take their 
place, when this is contrary to the present working of the law, contrary 
to reason, and contrary to all past experience. And this is only a single 
instance in the general practice of perverting the truth in official and 
political circles, for the benefit of the extortioners, and the enslavement 
of labor. 

Moreover does it not look inconsistent in the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury to admit that specie payments of the greenbacks is impractical by 
asking leave of Congress to exchange thirty year government bonds for 
them, and then in the very clause tell us that if the greenbacks are with- 
drawn, bank notes will take their place in circulation, when he must 
know that such notes would themselves have to be redeemable in specie ? 
He says also in the above extract that "the present time is regarded as 
opportune for the gradual withdrawal of these notes," meaning the 
greenbacks. We know of no reason why the present is an opportune 
time to withdraw the greenbacks, only it is now after an important 
national election, and after election is a good time to make haste to do 
evil, so as to get ready to make pretenses of good just before election. 

To show that under the present administration of President Hayes 
we are likely to have a continuation of the same ruinous policy as that 
marked out by the last Secretary of the Treasury under President Grant, 
we notice the fact that, for Secretary of the Treasury, President Hayes 
has appointed Hon. John Sherman, who, as a member of the United 
States Senate, brought in a bill to carry into effect the recommendations 
above named, of his predecessor, the Secretary of the Treasury, of 
December, 1876. And as Chairman of the Finance Committee in the 
United States Senate, this same Hon. John Sherman has championed all, 
or nearly all, the odious laws on their passage, that have crushed labor 
more and more for the eleven years last past. 

We purpose not to be an alarmist, and believe we are not. We 
think we have no motive or desire whatever to create misapprehension, 
or groundless fear or unjust distrust of the integrity or capacity of those 
in authority. But if this greenback money, constituting as it now does 
more than half of the currency of the country, be withdrawn from circu- 
lation by the first of January, 1879, tne iime fixed for resumption, there 
will be no enlargment of the bank note circulation to take its place, or 
at least a very inadequate one, and probably a contraction instead, and 
at that time there will be precipitated upon the people of this country a 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 39 

financial disaster and loss of estates, like unto and probably equal to that 
which was brought upon the English people in 1823, when more than 
four-fifths of the land owners of that country were robbed of their pos- 
sessions. All our principal finance laws passed in the last eleven years 
seem to us framed with a direct reference to a grand future crisis of that 
kind, to be brought about by contraction of the currency. We do not 
believe there has been a single annual report of our Secretary of the 
Treasury in all that eleven years that did not contain one or more recom- 
mendations, equally monstrous with that one just quoted from the last 
report, seeming to us to ignore the plainest dictates of common reason, 
common justice and practical experience, and aiming for a future crisis 
such as above mentioned. 

I now ask the reader to again peruse carefully the progress of the 
English crisis from its beginning, in 1815, to its culmination, in 1823, 
the time of resumption, as given in the above extract from Doubleday's 
History, page 2,^ of this book, and compare therewith, as far as we have 
progressed, our own experience, embracing the last eleven years of our 
history, again inspecting withal the table of bankruptcies on page 14. 
It will be found that we are traveling the same road exactly, and unless 
our people demand a halt, or restrain the government by popular de- 
mands, we are destined to the same end. The only difference is, that 
the game here has to proceed slower and more cautiously, more shifts and 
devices are needed, and more newspaper aid has to be employed here to 
befog the people than was required in England, because history throws 
more light on the subject now than it did then, and because the people 
here have more to do in the affairs of government than they had in Eng- 
land ; and moreover, by reason of our greater natural resources, our 
country is able, without total and immediate ruin, to endure a greater 
amount of robbery. I do not believe there ever was such a horrid sys- 
tem of usury practiced amongst men as preys upon this country at this 
very time. 

The crisis proceeds here as it did in England, with increasing bank- 
ruptcy of business firms, throwing laborers more and more out of 
employment. According to reliable statistics, shown on page 14, fail- 
ures in bankruptcy in this country have had a general increase for 
the last eleven years, being nineteen times as much in 1876 as in 1865. 
And every increase of bankruptcy has been marked by an increase of 
pauperism, suffering, death from destitution, disaffection, political and 
governmental corruption, and a failing of the confidence of our own 
people in our own republican institutions. 



40 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

We of the legal tender, or greenback school of faith, do not believe 
there has been a particle of need of any of these things. We firmly 
believe that if our finance laws had been framed upon the plain principles 
of right and justice, and in the interest of American labor, instead of 
the exclusive interest of domestic and foreign centralized capital, our 
national condition, in all respects above named, during the last eleven 
years, would have been as marked for its advance upward, as it has 
been for its downward decline. Our people in general merged from 
the war with the right spirit for this. Our natural advantages and 
resources are such as no other nation under heaven ever possessed. Our 
rulers have no valid excuse for the evils they have brought upon us. 

During all this eleven years of decline, we have constantly been told 
that a change for the better was beginning, or about to begin. At the 
present time, as the darkest part of this whole drama is about to be per- 
formed, or tried to be performed, the withdrawal of the greenback 
money, some extra spasmodic symptom of returning good must needs be 
produced, or feigned at least, as a blind for the people. Hence we are 
told that the balance of trade is now in our favor, and that will bring 
specie, for specie payments. Be not deceived. Any casual boon of 
that kind in the interest of labor, is long ago carefully provided against, 
by the accumulation of an enormous foreign indebtedness, of both a 
public and a private character, to absorb any considerable amount of 
specie likely to accumulate, while this rule of the money oligarchy is 
over us. 

Hon. Wm. D. Kelley, long a member of Congress from the Phila- 
delphia (Pa.) district, and who has familiarized himself more, probably, 
with the financial workings and statistics of this country than any other 
man in it, states that the interest on the national, state, municipal, rail- 
road, and other corporate debts due from this country to European 
creditors, together with the sums transmitted to Europe from different 
investments in this country, and to pay the expenses of travelers in Eu- 
rope, amount annually to fully $250,000,000. And estimating the bal- 
ance of trade in our, favor to be $185,000,000, which is higher than the 
official estimates, leaves against this country a balance of $65,000,000, 
to be provided for by the shipment of bonds, or the mortgage or transfer 
of titles to improved and productive property in large cities, which has 
been done. Mr. Kelley states further that it is many years since the 
production of manufactured goods in this country was as small as it has 
been during the year 1876. 

The above statement accords well with what it is reasonable to sup- 
pose is the fact. That is, that this foreign balance of trade in our favor 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 41 

is, in this instance, not the result of prosperity at home, but of lack of 
employment and poverty among our people. Our bankruptcies and 
bankrupt sales being of greater number than any former year, and labor- 
ers more unemployed than ever, would seem to indicate that we have not 
been producing more, but have been selling abroad cheap, and buying 
less from abroad, because of increased poverty among laborers. That is, 
we sold cheap abroad because our own people were too much unemployed 
and poor to buy and use what were to them the necessaries of life and of 
business. And our own factories, to a very large extent, are unable to 
be run at all, only because, having changed hands, the present owners 
got them almost for nothing, and are able to get work hands on the 
same scale of prices. What a triumph is this of governmental political 
economy ! The real test of prosperity is, whether or not labor has been 
employed and well paid. And labor was never so much unemployed, 
and never so poorly paid in any one previous year as in 1876, showing a 
constant decline in our industrial and financial condition, despite of con- 
stant prediction to the contrary by our government functionaries and 
their Shylock admirers. 

And, furthermore, the withdrawal of the greenback money from 
circulation, as recommended by our Secretary of the Treasury, and 
President Grant, also, will itself bring greatly increased prostration of 
labor and business, and turn the flow of specie away from us, provided 
we shall then have any to flow away. 

When Mr. Chase was Secretary of the Treasury, in time of the war, 
and before the commencement of this eleven years of decline, he desired 
authority from Congress to receive deposits of money in the Treasury 
from our people, payable back on ten days notice in our own lawful'paper 
money, with interest at five per cent. This would have been on the like 
principle of the interconvertible bond, now urged by the greenback ad- 
vocates. Had the plan of Mr. Chase been carried out, it would have 
enabled our government to obtain constant credit among our own busi- 
ness men to amount of several hundred millions of dollars, much to the 
benefit of the men themselves, and the saving of gold bonds being issued 
to foreigners. But Congress was full of bankers, as it always is, and 
they wanted these private deposits to bank on themselves ; for which 
reason the Secretary was permitted to receive only one hundred millions 
in this way, which was eagerly deposited. 

One Secretary of the Treasury under President Grant's administra- 
tion, by long continued effort, funded five hundred millions of our 
national debt in gold bonds and sold them in the foreign market, when, 
had our people been provided with legal tender paper money, so as to 



42 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

have kept our labor employed at home, after the French manner, we 
could have paid off the whole five hundred millions in less time than the 
Secretary was funding it. The policy seems to be to foster gold debts 
abroad and prostration of the industries at home, because this double 
fostering tends to increase our debts, public and private, and especially 
as we are going to base our currency all on specie, we must have these 
foreign debts to take the specie away from us in the shape of interest, 
then we will be without specie, without money basis, without money of 
course, and without price for anything ; then will we be in good condi- 
tion for our merciful British nobility benefactors, and their generous co- 
adjutors on these shores, to take us, with this little heritage of ours, into 
their kind care and keeping, both for ownership and government, civil 
and military. Then we shall have nothing to do but to hew their wood, 
draw their water, cultivate their soil, and fight such battles as they see 
fit, for their own glory and amusement, to set in array for us. 

The demonetizing of silver, as was done by act of Congress of 
February 12, 1873, * s a P art °f tms same scheme, taken in connection 
with issuing of foreign gold bonds, to get the country destitute of specie, 
and in that condition force specie payments, and thereby create a sweep- 
ing transfer of the peoples' property to a moneyed few, in the same 
manner as was done in England, and to establish the same condition of 
things here as there, to wit : a noble few to own the country and rule it, 
and a vassalage to perform the work. If this is the destiny intended for 
us by the founders of our government, I have labored under a great mis- 
take all my life. 



CHAPTER XII. 



SPECIE— SPECIE BASIS— SPECIE PAYMENTS. 



The great pretext that the British government made for the laws 
resulting in a general transfer of the property of her people from 181 5 
to 1825, was to bring the country to a specie basis, or specie payments, 
so called. Our government functionaries and finance doctors, are now 
making the same pretext for the enactment of laws leading to the same 
result. 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 43 

Specie basis or specie payments should be something of great value 
to cost so much suffering. What is it therefore and what is it for ? This 
specie basis or specie payment is a something written down in the books 
of British science, and from thence, copied into ours. Specie is a some- 
thing that a very few wealthy men, of almost any country, can buy up 
and hold at will, substantially the entire stock in that country, as is 
done now in the United States. This being done, then if there be no 
law for any legal tender paper money in the country, but all the money, 
in order to be good, must be either specie or redeemable in specie, these 
few men will hold entire control of the money of the country, and can 
control all business and prices, and virtually own nearly everything in 
the country sooner or later, as always is done where this specie basis 
fraud exists. 

Again, this same specie is good to make watch cases, watch chains, 
and gold and silver dishes of, and to work into an innumerable variety 
of ornaments for persons, male and female, and otherwise to gratify the 
whims, vanity, and pomp of the wealthy classes. And to what extent it 
may be required for this purpose in any one country, depends upon the 
changes of fashion and the ability of men to indulge in it, either of 
which is unstable as the waves of the sea. Likewise in times of war, 
danger, or financial uncertainty, this specie is good to hoard up, and is 
hoarded by men who are able, from motives of both security and specu- 
lation. 

And besides these things occurring within the country, the like 
casualties all over the world, together with the uncertainty of the yield 
of mines, and the ever varying laws of the different countries in mone- 
tizing and demonetizing gold and silver and other materials, makes the 
presence and availability of specie, either for money or the basis of 
currency, one of the most unreliable things in this unreliable world. 

Yet British science calls this most fickle commodity, the most reliable 
for a money basis. This policy will do for the British nobility, as a most 
excellent fiction by which to turn systematically to themselves the earn- 
ing of the British laborers, as is constantly done in that country. It 
may also do for American politicians or office-seekers (who, as we are 
aware, are excusable if they have no ideas of their own), to prate about 
so as to please the money dealers and get their money support. But an 
American farmer, who is entitled to vote, and has a farm that he desires 
to keep and not have filched from him, and every other person identified 
with the labor interests of the country, should consult his own common 
reason and his practical observation of things, and not lay aside either of 
these, to be be misled and ensnared by British fiction and clap-trap. 



44 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

To know anything about this subject of money, it is necessary to 
pause right here, and consider definitely what specie basis or specie pay- 
ments mean. Most people think they do understand it, and yet do not 
exactly. Very many think that because we, the greenback men, oppose 
specie basis, we oppose specie money. This is furtherest possible from 
the truth. We do not object to specie money. The greenback princi- 
ples, if thoroughly carried out, will make specie abundant in the coun- 
try, as shown on page 21. Nor do we very seriously object to having 
our paper money promise to be redeemed in specie. The dependence 
on redemption is specie basis, so called. This is what we do object to 
most strenuously, having the value of the currency depend in the least 
degree upon its being so redeemed in specie. That is, the paper cur- 
rency whether so redeemed or not, should be a full legal tender for all 
debts throughout the country, the same as specie, so as to keep it par 
with specie in value. Owing to the fickle nature of specie, there is in 
fact no such thing as specie basis for the currency of any commercial 
nation. Specie basis means no basis at all, but the absolute power of a 
few men to decide in their own interests how much currency the people 
shall have for business, or whether any at all or not, with power to 
change the amount to suit their own speculative purposes. 

To illustrate still more completely the real nature of this specie 
basis idea, take for example our own country, the United States. Now, 
any one year of prosperous business throughout this country would be 
attended always by two things : one is the activity of its money passing 
from hand to hand, the other is growth. In other words, if we have a 
single year of active, healthy business, we are ready the next year to do 
a still greater business. Business grows with its growth. Growth of 
business requires a corresponding growth in the quantity, of money, just 
exactly as a tree that grows vigorously one year by the nourishment of 
the earth and air, received through the sap, requires a greater quantity of 
that sap the next year to continue the growth and health of the tree. 
Hence we see, in the Creator's order of things, as a tree grows larger its 
roots, fibers and foliage reach forth deeper and higher and broader, that 
they may gather and transmit the necessary increase of sap and nourish- 
ment to the whole tree. Circumscribe those roots and fibers, or other- 
wise withhold the necessary increase of sap required by nature, and you 
dwarf the tree or kill it. 

Precisely so it is with nations. Prosperity, if we have any, is 
attended with growth, and a necessity for an increase of money. With- 
hold the increase of money, and you will dwarf the nation, or kill it, 
and murder the inhabitants. Under a specie basis order of things, what 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 4^ 

has the supply of specie to do with the wants of the nation for more or 
less money. Is it any where revealed to us that mines and jobbers will 
always give forth a supply just suited to the business necessities ? Nay, 
verily. But in proportion as you attempt to actually base the currency 
on specie, will the jobbers grasp the specie and keep it out of legitimate 
business. Thus you limit the money of the country by an arbitrary, 
irresponsible power, that feels no sympathy with the money wants of 
the nation. The theory therefore, of basing the money of a country 
upon specie the most liable of all materials to be snatched away for lux- 
ury, vanity, and speculation, and all the more sure to be so snatched 
away, as the more we attempt actually to base money upon it, is a dia- 
bolical idea, a wholesale murderous conception, and contrary to the 
Creator's order of things. To say that such materials, gold or silver or 
both together constitute the best basis for currency, is as contrary to the 
truth as to say that a brothel is the best place to preserve chastity, or 
that the taking of strong drink is the best way to keep temperate, or that 
a deep-sounding bed of quick-sand is the best foundation for a house. 



CHAPTER XIII, 



DID ENGLAND AFTER ALL ESTABLISH SPECIE BASIS? 



England herself does not in reality base her currency on specie nor 
could she without bringing all business to a dead stop in a very short 
time. She just mixes enough of this specie basis fiction in her finances 
to continually or periodically divest the laboring classes of their earn- 
ings for the benefit of the nobility. But for the real basis of value to 
her currency, she makes the notes of the Bank of England, as well as 
her coins, a full legal tender for the payment of debts, but not the notes 
of the other banks. From this we see that even in England specie basis 
is a mere fiction, a false pretense. 

We have already seen what a terrible siege of robbery, destitution, 
suffering and death the government of England made its people pass 
through from 1815 to 1823, to reach specie basis, or specie payments, 



46 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

the pretended haven of rest and happiness. And what was the result ? 
The following statement being condensed from an article in the St. 
Louis Commercial of March 23, 1876, shows what that specie payment 
bliss amounted to when obtained : 

" At the time of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, in 1815, the Bank 
of England and the country banks had an issue of $270,000,000. The 
cry of resumption being raised, the banks set about a sharp contraction 
of both their issues and their discounts. Between 1815 and 1823, they 
reduced the volume of their issue 33 per cent. 

"The crisis was at its height from the 12th to the 17th of December 
1825. Up to the night of the 14th the Bank of England had restricted 
its issues; but at that time becoming sensible of its error, it resolved to 
make common cause with the country, and issued circulating notes 
to amount of $25,000,000. This policy was crowned with the most 
complete success. The panic was stayed almost instantly. Credit was 
revived, and a needless and protracted period of suffering was averted. 
This remedy consisted in a profuse issue of irredeemable paper money 
to the amount of $25,000,000. 

"Similar but less disastrous panics happened in 1836 and 1839, and 
from then to 1843 general commercial stagnation prevailed throughout 
England. 

" In 1844, Peel's restriction act was passed by parliament forbid- 
ding the bank to issue beyond 14,000,000 pounds sterling on the gov- 
ernment stocks, except she has the gold in her vaults, pound for pound. 

"Three years after this act was passed in 1847, tne next panic 
ensued. The extreme pressure began September 23d and continued 
until October 23d, when the terrible game was played out. The Queen's 
government ordering the act suspended and the currency expanded, 
two millions of dollars, with the assurance that plenty more could be 
had, cured this panic instanter. 

"In 1857 the most unexpected and disastrous crisis they had ever 
experienced swept across to them from our shores. To stop this panic 
the bank act was suspended again, and the currency — paper money — 
was expanded nearly $34,000,000, in excess of the limit, which then 
stood at nearly 15,000,000 pounds. 

" In 1866, they had it again. The Chancellor of the Exchequer 
said the excitement was without parallel. On the evening of this black 
Friday, the ministery advised the suspension of the bank act, which was 
done the next morning, and in the course of five days $60,000,000 of 
paper money issued to the entire relief of business and restoration of 
confidence." 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 47 

From the above it will be seen what a beautiful thing this forced 
specie payment was when reached through the horrible robbery of the 
English people in 1823. After it was reached it was maintained with 
increasing.suffering and misery for two years and seven months, and then 
December 17, 1825, a suspension had to take place, and $25,000,000 of 
irredeemable paper money had to be issued to stay the wretchedness. 
And again another author, Hon. Isaac Buchanan, says: "England 
seems to the world to have survived the process of a return to specie 
payment, although how she has done so, if gone into in detail, would 
be the saddest and most harrowing record of human suffering. * * * 
At the end of thirty years (in 1839) the revenue, or in other words the 
property of the country, got fairly broken down, under the insiduous 
operation of the British money system/' Further the honorable gentle- 
man says, that in the 1847 panic, thousands died of starvation in the 
cellars of the manufacturing and seaport towns of Great Britain. 

Such are the effects of specie basis, or specie payments, so called, a 
thing that the English government pretended to think of such great 
value, and so desirable, as that, in order to reach it, she dragged her 
people from a condition of " prosperity universal and then unheard of," 
through eight years of unheard of bankruptcy, starvation and misery, and 
then, when reached, the result was a continuation of the same horrors, 
until relieved again in two years and seven months by a temporary re- 
turn to suspension of specie payments and the issue of irredeemable 
paper money. And then again, after twenty years more of miserable 
existence on the part of the labor of the country, we find the laborers 
dying by thousands, of starvation, in the cellars of the manufacturing 
and seaport towns. And still these scenes have been followed by suc- 
cessive horrors of a similar kind at intervals ever since, relieved in every 
instance by a return to suspension and an issue of irredeemable paper 
money. 

And still further, as late as 1875, we fi nc * the Chamber of Commerce 
of the British kingdom unanimously adopted a resolution praying the 
Chancellor of Exchequer to appoint a commission to enquire, amongst 
other things, " into the constitution and actual management of the 
Bank of France, as compared with the constitution and actual manage- 
ment of the Bank of England ; as to the points of difference in the con- 
stitution and actual management of those banks respectively, to which 
may be attributed the crises and panics which occur periodically in the 
English money market, and do not occur in the French money market 
at all." 

Now, it is to be borne in mind that there has been no specie pay- 



48 BY WHAT LAWS LABofc CAN StCtfRfi 

ments ill France since 1870, or at least no law yet in force requiring it ; 
and yet, the paper money of that country > unlike that of England, is all 
a full legal tender, and all the time substantially par with gold. This 
is the one essential point of difference between the two systems of money 
of those two countries, the French paper currency, or money, is a full 
legal tender for the payment of all debts, public and private, within the 
realm, and can, therefore, issue continually, and does issue, in sufficient 
quantities for the business of the country, without any depreciation of 
value. Whilst in England, the bills of none of the banks, except the 
Bank of England, are a general legal tender for debt, but depend for 
their value on being redeemed in specie, or in the Bank of England 
bills ; whilst the bills of the Bank of England, although a legal tender, 
are limited usually to such amount as can be redeemed in specie. That 
is, in short, the English paper money is, to some extent, at least, specie 
basis money, whilst that of France is irredeemable, rag-baby stuff, essen- 
tially such as England had in time of her great prosperity, and yet such 
as the prevailing authorities of this country and England call a perni- 
cious evil, but which the commercial or mercantile interests of Eng- 
land are longing to have established in opposition to the specie basis 
fiction of the money craft of that country. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



EXPERIENCE OF THE UNITED STATES WITH SPECIE 
BASIS CURRENCY. 



In respect to the experience of this country with specie basis 
money, it is first to be observed that we always, when under the specie 
basis or specie payment system, were convulsed more or less when Eng- 
land was. But in 1866, with our greenback money, we did not feel the 
terrible English panic of that year, showing the superiority of the legal 
tender system for stability in respect to foreign calamities and influence. 

But in this country men of sufficient age, living and in business 
before the late war, and who make their own observation of things, know 



GReaT an!) Lasting prosperity; 40 

that this specie basis always proved a deception and false pretense to us, 
capable of producing wide extremes in the supply of money, and of 
course in the prices of property, and thereby causing wide-spread peri- 
odical bankruptcy of our best, most enterprising and useful citizens. 
And this is just what this specie basis, otherwise called specie payments, 
was for. 

But as applied to our present condition, with this national debt on 
hand, and by that means the tendencies that now exist for the centrali- 
zation of moneyed or credit wealth, specie basis becomes to us a far 
more serious delusion than ever before. As applied to us now, it finds 
us with finance laws that drive specie from the country. It finds us with 
an aristocracy fast growing in wealth at the expense of labor, and of 
course growing in its whims, vanity and pomp, requiring more and 
more the gold and silver of the country for ornament and display. Our 
import duties are required by law to be paid in specie, which takes about 
#160,000,000 annually. The interest on the national debt must be paid 
in specie, requiring about #80,000,000 annually. A foreign specie 
drainage, as shown on page 40, requires some #250,000,000 annually. 
To meet all these requirements for specie our mines yield about #80,- 
000,000 a year on the average, and we have now in the country about 
#160,000,000 of specie according to the best advices on the subject. 
But suppose the present supply was twice this amount, there surely is 
none too much to meet all the requirements above mentioned, leaving 
none for redemption purposes. Now, our paper currency amounts to 
near #750,000,000, counting in all reserves, and should be increased to 
more than twice this amount. Where now is the specie that is to be 
used for the basis or redemption of even the #700,000,000 of currency, 
to say nothing of the more than doubling the amount, which must be 
done, provided we are to prosper at all in the matter of labor and gene- 
ral finances of the people at large. The scheme is a false pretense. It 
is not expected by our leading men to redeem our currency in 
specie, but it is expected under the false pretense of specie basis to 
drive the paper money from circulation, so that a few men with a little 
money will buy up most of the country, or at least a very large share of 
it, and rule us by their power of wealth. This is the big job now on 
hand. 

Now really I do not see as we have any room to wonder that there 
is great lack of employment for labor, and great destitution and suffering 
among our people, even in the midst of great natural resources, such as we 
have, since we are under a system of money or political economy, the 
very foundation of which is a living, unmitigated falsehood* Falsehoods 



50 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

are bad enough at the best, but when taken as the foundation for a sys- 
tem of money, on which all human interests are dependent, then won- 
der not at any disaster that may come upon the people, however great or 
wide-spread. 



CHAPTER XV. 



SUMMARY OF SPECIE BASIS FOR MONEY. 



Money is the life blood of all business. Its proper quantity and 
value, and its free uninterrupted circulation for the purposes of trade 
and the payment of debts, is absolutely necessary to the health and life 
of business, and also to the proper health and life of men. Specie basis 
ignores every one of these three great requirements of money. Specie 
as a sole dependence for money, is a barbarism, but specie basis, or 
specie payments, as the basis of currency, is a ficticious refinement of 
modern civilization, whereby communities are divided in two general 
classes, nobles and vassals, or slaves. This specie basis is the great 
Demi-God amongst fables, fictions and frauds. Its altars are stained 
with the blood of more human sacrifices, and strewed with the wreck of 
more human fortunes, enjoyments, hopes and virtues than all other 
altars in the wide range of modern superstition and king-craft. Amer- 
ican equality, American freedom, and the American republic, will very 
soon be altogether matters of the past, mere names only, unless we can 
slay this great arch enemy of our institutions. 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 5 I 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE GREENBACK— LEGAL TENDER— THE RAG BABY. 



Early in the late war in this country, the specie promises, or bank 
notes of the country nearly all failed, as they were wont to do in times 
of financial doubt. The specie hid itself cowardly and treacher- 
ously out of sight, in the misers' chests and safes, and the country was 
virtually without money. The government of the United States then 
tried the specie basis money in a new form, and with new guarantees. 
Under an act of August 5, 1861, it issued fifty millions of its own notes, 
on the face of which was stamped its own promise to pay specie on 
demand, for the fulfillment of which promise it had power to tax all 
the property of the nation. Yet when any of these notes were presented 
to the government for the payment of specie, it could not get the specie 
to pay with, and of course the notes depreciated and failed just like the 
notes of the country banks. 

Our condition was then desperate. The people were destitute of 
money to do business with, and the government for the carrying on of 
the war. The rebellion was sure to be a success unless money could be 
had. We were not all fools or knaves. A few good men in this country 
had long known the difference between money and specie promises. A 
bill was drawn up for the issue of government notes, substantially like 
the others, except with the addition of a clause declaring these latter 
notes to be lawful money and a legal tender for the payment of all debts 
public and private. The bill passed the lower house of Congress in this 
form. When it came to the Senate, the Shylocks bethought themselves 
that this would not do. They were willing, and perhaps more than 
willing that the rebellion should be put down, but in every case they 
must have their pound of flesh, and in this case many tons of it. They 
said we will not let this bill pass and become a law unless we can except 
from its operation interest on the government bonds. This being 
excepted, custom duties had to be excepted also, during the wa'r, so as 
to furnish specie to pay interest. These exceptions would make the 



52 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

money to be issued very imperfect, cause it to depreciate, and create a 
vast speculation in gold. But better pass in this form than not at all. The 
great injury to come upon the country by these exceptions to the law of 
legal tender, was at the time foretold by that true old statesman and 
patriot, Thaddens Stevens, who was one of the authors of the bill. Said 
he: 

" Mr. Speaker, I have a few words to say. I approach the subject 
with more depression of spirits than I ever before approached any ques- 
tion. No personal motive or feeling influences me. I hope not at 
least. I have a melancholy foreboding that we are about to consum- 
mate a cunningly devised scheme which will carry great injury and great 
loss to all classes of the people throughout the Union except one. With 
my colleague, I believe that no act of legislation of the government was 
ever hailed with as much delight throughout the whole length and 
breadth of this Union, by every class of people, without any exception, 
as the bill which we passed and sent to the Senate. * * * It is true 
there was a doleful sound came up from the caverns of the bullion bro- 
kers and from the saloons of the associated banks. Their cashiers and 
agents were soon on the ground, and persuaded the Senate with but little 
deliberation to mangle and destroy what it had cost the House months 
to digest, consider and pass." 

The bill did pass, though mutilated by the bankers, and became a 
law, and notes were issued under it to amount of #150,000,000. afterwards 
increased to #450,000. These were the greenbacks proper. Crippled 
in quality, and stinted in quantity, as they were by the Shylocks, to less 
than half the amount the country needed, yet, by the aid of some $1,- 
700,000,000 of other currency, (a list of which is shown on page 14, issued 
in still more objectionable form, by reason of its bearing interest) these 
greenbacks put down the rebellion, and have been the money and basis 
of money, with which all business throughout this vast country has been 
carried on ever since, being mostly still in circulation. 

Now reader, notice one point if you please. Wherein does the 
wonderful virtue of these greenback notes consist? What character or 
quality have they that the former notes, which failed and did nothing, 
had not? It was simply the provision of the law printed on the notes as 
in the statute book, that they should be lawful money and legal tender, 
for the payment of all debts, public and private, except interest on the pub- 
lic debt and customs. That is, every person was bound to take them for 
debt, or loose the debt. This is the simple thing that wrought our great 
salvation,, and is still doing everything for us in the character of money. 
The bank notes have no such provision. They are only good because 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 53 

redeemable in the greenback money. So it will be seen, that this legal 
tender principle of the greenback is the thing that underlies and sustains 
all our busness, and has done so, both in war and peace, for the last 
fifteen years. 

And yet the Shylocks, their organs and pimps, tell us every day that 
it is impossible, by a law of Congress, to make money out of that which 
has no intrinsic value. These men might as well deny the existence of 
the air that they breathe, or of the sun that shines in the heavens. It is 
this legal tender principle of the greenback that constitutes the Rag 
Baby that has for years been the object of so much ridicule and derision. 
It is this very principle of legal tender that causes such inveterate hatred 
of the Shylocks toward the greenback. And for this simple reason, that 
it is an honest principle, tending to uniformity and stability in finances ; 
and making it practicable for the government, at all times, to keep in 
circulation a just supply of money, without any regard to the presence 
or absence of this cowardly and treacherous material called specie. 
This legal tender principle of the greenback is what belongs, in a still 
greater degree, to the French paper money, and gives such wonderful 
prosperity there ; and it is the same principle of the English paper 
money that gave such great prosperity there from 1797 to 1815. It is 
the same principle that gave prosperity and stability to Venetian finances 
without a panic or crisis for more than five hundred years. It is on account 
of this honest, stable and reliable principle, legal tender, of the green- 
back that sharpers and Shylocks are trying to get rid of the greenbacks, 
and have them taken in and burned up, and gold bonds issued in their 
place, as recommended by the last Secretary of the Treasury / and sanc- 
tioned by the present one, John Sherman, by introducing a bill to that 
effect in the United States Senate. No greater act of treason to labor 
could be committed. Nor could, as I believe, a greater crime be com- 
mitted against God or humanity. The scattering of infectious disease, 
such as smallpox, amongst the people would not be half so bad, because 
against this the people guard themselves ; but to take away the people's 
money is like taking away the air they breathe , there is no protection 
or safe-guard that can be resorted to. Their only salvation from such 
villainy is to demand that the money shall not be taken away. This they 
can do to effect. 



54 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 



CHAPTER XVII. 



THE GREAT ISSUE OF THIS EPOCH. 



If this greenback, or legal tender principle was withdrawn from 
circulation, then of course our paper currency must be bank notes, not 
a legal tender, but based upon specie promises. This is the Shylocks 
wish, because it will bring about a grand sweeping transfer of the peo- 
ple's property to them, the Shylocks, in the near future; and thence, 
ever afterward, leave us in a fluctuating condition, as to the rise and 
fall of the prices of property, after the British order of things, thus sub- 
jecting us to periodical robberies for the benefit of a nobility of wealth. 

On the contrary the greenback men, so called, seek to get rid of the 
national bank notes, issue greenback money'in their place, have no other 
paper money but the greenbacks, and as early as practicable to be done 
in good faith, make the greenback money a full legal tender for all dues 
including customs and everything else, as Thaddeus Stevens wanted it 
in the first place, and as the French paper money is, and likewise make 
it exchangeable at the option of the holder for government bonds bear- 
ing a rate of interest not exceeding 3.65 per cent, per annum, the bonds 
in like manner to be exchangeable for the notes. This exchangeability 
will regulate the quantity and prevent undue inflation and contraction. 

This issue between specie basis and legal tender, is the great issue 
in the present epoch of our country's history. It is the issue upon the 
determination of which depends whether we are to have a glorious future 
of uninterrupted prosperity, or a terrible crisis in the near future, and 
then successive money panics and crises thereafter, holding the labor- 
ing people of the country in degradation, like the English vassals. It 
is the issue between slavery and freedom; between a republican govern- 
ment and an oligarchy in the United States. If these be the real facts 
of the case, then, can any man properly informed as he should be, join 
in the derision or abrogation of the "rag baby," so called (which means 
simply the legal tender principle), and be a truly loyal man ? Surely 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 55 

not. It is treachery to American labor, and treachery to American 
labor is treachery to American freedom and to American free govern- 
ment. 

In the autumn of 1875, in a public assemblage somewhere, Mr. Grant, 
then the President of the United States, proclaimed the "Rag Baby" 
entirely suppressed. The laboring people of this country should find 
out the identical spot whereon he stood when he uttered those sacralig- 
ious words, and there erect a monument, not to the dead, but the living 
Rag Baby, as high and grand as that on Bunker Hill. General Grant 
was not the chief captain of the late war. It was this same derided Rag 
Baby, crippled and bruised, though it was in the house of its friends, that 
led both General Grant and all the host of the Union Army. It is as 
true as holy writ, that, that same Rag Baby had a thousand times more 
to do with that war than General Grant did, and since the war, has had 
a thousand times more to do with the affairs of peace than the General 
and President both. 

No doubt General Grant is entitled to great praise for his military 
services, yet, had he never been born, some other man would have filled 
the measure of his usefulness, but there never was, never will be, and 
never can be, but the one Rag Baby, in the sense that we speak, and no 
other creature under the sun can do its part in the drama of human 
affairs. And then, what shall we say of the future ? When Grant, the 
President and General, both, shall not only have laid aside the habili- 
ments of a brief earthly power and glory, but the mortal remains of the 
great man be consigned to its narrow home, the Rag Baby, if this repub- 
lic lives, will be unfettered, healed of its wounds, perfected in its symme- 
try and strength, and live throughout all this vast country, the immediate 
companion of every laborer, present in all business, in every shop, mine, 
farm work, store, office, vessel, commercial and monetary center ; the 
great adjuster of prices, dividends and profits, the energizer of all our 
affairs and unceasingly growing in its power to impart prosperity and 
happiness to all our people, as through the ages to come, the nation 
shall wax mightier in its population and doings. 

This is the Rag Baby. Shall we have it ? Or shall we have its 
inveterate enemy, Shylock's specie basis, the centralizer of capital, 
the degrader of labor, the grinder of the poor, and the friend of mon- 
archy ? Say, laboring millions of America, which shall we have ? It is 
for you to say. Yours is the power now. If you have any choice 
between the two, in behalf of your own interests, promptness, decision, 
discernment, independence of thought, and strength of will, and deter- 
mination of action, and sacrifices freely to be made, are required of you, 



56 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

I am not mistaken, but know whereof I affirm, when I declare to you, 
American laborers, that your republican government will be a total fail- 
ure, and you will become slaves, unless you go about it and abolish the 
specie basis fiction, and establish the legal tender principle of paper 
money, with proper regulation for quantity. But this being done, and 
your freedom will be insured, and your republican government a glorious 
success, 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



COMING TO THE HEART OF OUR SUBJECT— PLEASANTRY 

AHEAD, 



On page 28 I promised that I would, by-and-by, present the subject 
of the real basis of value to money, which topic constitutes the very 
heart of our great subject treated of in this work. This basis of value to 
money will be our next topic following this one. Any one that can 
understand the real basis of value to money, can easily understand the 
whole subject of the American Labor interests, in all necessary particu- 
lars. And any one that cannot understand the real basis of value to 
money, (if there be such persons, they must be very few,) or any one 
who is too much prejudiced by the fallacies that he has learned from the 
money craft, to investigate the topic with candor, will never know any- 
thing properly about the labor interests of his country. 

It is precisely from this one point ot the basis of value to money 
that all differences of opinion, or pretended opinion, start out, leading 
to such opposite results, on the subject of money, and the interests of 
labor connected therewith, and putting at such distracting loggerheads, 
both good men and bad, wise men and fools. This basis of value to 
money being the vital point of the great compound subject of money and 
labor, the money craft have taken immense pains to inculcate false 
theories in respect to it, knowing right well that if they can get the 
American laborers bewildered on this one point, they can easily get 
them to vote away their earnings, their productive property, and their 
liberties, for Shylock aggrandizement 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 57 

Therefore, as this topic, of the basis of value to money, is of such 
vital importance to be rightly, clearly and familiarly understood by the 
American laborers, now and for all time, beyond the power of the craft 
to longer deceive them, I have to ask you, laborer, to study the topic 
deliberately, and, before studying it at all, turn back to the top of page 
20, and read again from thence to the top of page 23. No matter 
how familiar you may think yourself to be with what is on those pages, 
do not, if you please, fail to read them again, so as to enter upon the 
study of the next chapter, concerning the basis of value of money with 
your mind lively impressed with the truths uttered upon those pages. 

From all this precaution, do not think that I am about to lead you 
into perplexities, or things hard to understand, for if you comply with my 
request, you will find the investigation of this supposed knotty problem of 
the basis of value to money, to be only a little matter of pleasant pastime, 
of great satisfaction and profit to yourself. 



CHAPTER XIX, 



WHAT IS THE TRUE BASIS OF VALUE TO MONEY ? 



This question is the pivot, or central point upon which turns all the 
inquiries and doctrines, rights and interests discussed in this book. 
Whoever talks about the basis of value to money, let him think closely 
before he speaks ; and then be careful what words he uses, and how he 
puts them together, for, like the railroad switch, a slight error in the 
movement of which, will hurl the train into the ditch, or to destruction, 
instead of sending it out on its grand trip; so a little error in the matter 
of money basis, whether from lack of wisdom or honesty, has led nations, 
betimes, into most woeful disasters ; whilst the simple truth, if adopted, 
will invariably lead to great national prosperity. 

Some, including the authorities over us, say that money must be 
specie, or based on specie* that is, on specie payments. Others say that 



58 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

it is the stamp of the government that gives value to money. Some are 
accustomed to say that specie is insufficient in amount for a specie basis, 
and that, in order to have money in sufficient supply, it must be based on 
credit. Some others talk of the faith of the nation as the basis for 
money ; and still others, about all the property of the country as being 
the true basis for money value. 

The first named of the above doctrines, that is, the specie basis, I 
have already portrayed as being a fiction and gigantic fraud, for the 
enslavement of labor. In the other expressions that follow, there are 
some shadows of meaning, and yet it seems to me one and all of them 
leave the mind unsatisfied for the want of any definiteness of conclusion 
as to what is the real reliable basis for money, or whether there is any or 
not. And I incline to think that most of the greenback advocates use, 
to some extent, old trite expressions of the money craft, not because of 
any sense or truth in them, but in order to pander to the foolish errors 
of others, and thus turn them to the greenback cause. I think it better 
to hew to the line of strictest truth in every word we speak. 

Let us not forget that we are now inquiring after the real basis of 
value to money, something that will never fail us. Let us see. The basis 
of value to everything is the use that can be made of it. The basis of 
value to potatoes and grain, is their qualities of nourishment for food. 
That of cloth is the quality of covering us, making us comfortable and 
comely in appearance. The basis of value to a farm is its susceptibility 
of production. And the basis of value to money must be the mOney 
use, or in other words, that which will cause the money to be useful and 
available as such, that is to pay debts and make purchases. I go into a 
retail store and call for sundry articles of merchandise, and they are 
weighed out and measured off, wrapped up and delivered to me in such 
quantities as I order. They are now mine. But I owe the merchant a 
debt. I have something in my pocket with which I expect to pay the 
debt. This something may be taken from the animal, vegetable or 
mineral kingdom, it matters not which for our present purpose. I offer 
it or a portion of it to the merchant for the debt, and he refuses to 
accept it. I insist that he shall. Who shall decide? It is purely a 
question of law. I get the national statute law book, and search, but 
cannot find this thing therein declared to be lawful money nor a legal 
tender for paying debts. I must therefore procure for him something 
that is so declared, or that he is at least willing to take. The thing that I 
offered him may have intrinsic value, or promise something of intrinsic 
value, as a bank note for instance, promising specie, and may in fact be 
five times as valuable as the debt I owe, but for all that, it is not what 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 59 

the merchant can use in his business and will not answer to pay that 
debt. It surely has no basis for a money value, or at least a very poor 
one — I would say none at all. 

But suppose upon that examination of the statute law book, we had 
found the thing in question was therein declared to be lawful money and 
a legal tender for all debts, dues and money obligations, public and 
private, in the United States, then every one will see that the merchant 
would be required to accept it in payment ; and he would be obliged to 
accept of it right then and there at the time of the offer; or otherwise, 
lose his debt; for this is the legal effect of offering anything that is a 
legal tender for debts. Nor would this legal compulsion of the merchant to 
take it be anything that he would regret or be sorry for, because the very 
law that compelled him to take it, would enable him to pass it to the whole- 
sale merchant for goods, the wholesale merchant to the manufacturer, the 
manufacturer to the coal dealer, the coal dealer to the coal miner, the 
coal miner to one of his workmen, and the workman to the flour dealer, 
the flour dealer to the miller, the miller to the farmer for wheat, by the 
farmer to the tax-gatherer for the county government, and by the gov- 
ernment to the bridge builder, and so on in all the endless rounds of 
human business. It would be of great use to every one through whose 
hands it passed, and the same principle and business necessity that made 
it useful to them would keep it going in its useful rounds, week after 
week, year after year, and from one generation to another, so long as 
the legal tender law should remain. 

Now, what is the basis of value to this money. Not specie, nor 
specie payment, surely, for we have not supposed any specie or specie 
payment to be connected with it. Neither is it credit of any kind. 
There is no credit about it. Credit is reliance upon the fulfillment of 
some promise. But we have not supposed any promise about it. 
Neither is it the stamp on the money that constitutes its basis of value 
properly. Though there must be a stamp upon it to identify it as per- 
taining to that class of things referred to in the statute law, yet that 
stamp itself would have no effect to give it money value, without the 
statute law declaring it shall be lawful money, and a legal tender for 
paying debts. Evidently, the real basis of value to this money, or thing, 
whatever it may be made of, is the statute law of legal tender that decided 
the case between me and the retail merchant, and started the money, or 
thing, on its mission of good to men. 

I shall be very sorry if any laborer who, having commenced reading 
this work, becomes tired of it, and abandons it altogether before reaching 
this point, for I am fully persuaded that we have now come upon the 



60 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

rock. After this long searching amongst the ruins of human hopes and 
fortunes, we have come upon something which, as yet dimly seen by the 
reader it may be, in consequence of rubbish thrown upon it by wicked 
hands to conceal it, nevertheless, upon careful examination, we shall 
most certainly find it to be the genuine, solid rock upon which we may 
now proceed to build our temple of freedom to American labor, against 
which all the gates of the bullion caverns shall never be able to prevail. 
That solid rock is the following fundamental truth : 



CHAPTER XX. 



THE ONLY TRUE AND MOST RELIABLE BASIS TO THE 

VALUE OF MONEY, IS THE LAW OF FULL LEGAL 

TENDER FOR THE PAYMENT OF DEBTS. 



From the foregoing illustrations it would seem plain, how it is that 
permanent money value can be imparted to that which has no intrinsic 
value. Real money value is always created by law, usually statute law. 
Money value should not rest upon any promise. Money should be one 
thing, and money promises entirely another. It is just as easy to give 
money value by law to that which has no intrinsic value, as to give it to 
anything that has such value. Intrinsic value does not help the money 
value in the least, but oftentimes totally defeats it. Intrinsic value 
means that the material is suited to some other use besides money, as 
for instance watch cases and jewelry. But just so long as the material, 
whatever it be, is used for money or the basis of money, so to speak, 
its intrinsic value cannot be made available. And just as quick as its 
intrinsic value is made available, by its conversion into watch cases or 
jewelry for instance, it leaves the money circuit at once, and its money 
use, so beneficial to men, is defeated and stopped altogether. 

By the words "full legal tender," in the above title, we mean a 
legal tender for all debts and money obligations, both public and pri- 
vate, within the country and jurisdiction of its laws, including taxes, of 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 6 1 

course. Paper money thus endowed by law with full legal tender quali- 
ties, and the quantity rightly regulated, as explained in the next chapter, 
will keep at par with gold without any forced redemption about it. The 
paper money being kept at par with gold coin, then of course usually no 
one would object to pay the one for the other whenever desired. That 
is, the paper money becomes convertible into coin or coin into paper, at 
the option of the holder of either. When this is the condition of 
things, then what need is there for forced specie payments or redemp- 
tion, so called ? And what the need of this crushing of labor and this 
wholesale bankruptcy and murder, under the specious plea of redemp- 
tion or specie payments ? None in the least. We might have had the 
paper money of the country par with the gold all the time, ever since the 
war, and great prosperity of labor besides, simply by making the green- 
backs a full legal tender for debts. The opinions of many eminent men 
of all parties could be given, to the effect that the way to make the 
greenback money par with gold would be to make it a legal tender, for 
paying customs only in addition to its present legal tender uses. 

Here is the foundation of the wonderful financial success of France, 
and the great prosperity of labor in that country, as already spoken of in 
this work. It was also the foundation of the steady and uninterrupted 
prosperity of labor, finance and commerce of Venice for more than five 
hundred years, without a panic and without any depreciation of the cur- 
rency. The currency of Venice, not redeemable at all in gold or silver 
or anything else, stood of equal value with gold for over five hundred 
years, simply by being made a full legal tender for all debts, and twenty 
per cent, above gold because it drew four per cent, interest per annum ; 
and, until by a law of the commonwealth the premium was fixed at 
twenty per cent., it had stood at thirty percent, above gold. And upon 
this same foundation full legal tender irredeemable paper money, unfet- 
tered and free from the domination and craft of the specie manipula- 
tors, we in this country can have fully as great prosperity of labor and 
of finances as now exists in France, or as existed in England from 1797 
to 1815, (spoken of on page 28,) and not only so, but we can have this 
prosperity all the time, from year to year, and from one generation to 
another. 

But the reader may still entertain the idea of some difficulties in 
the way of the success we speak of. It may occur to his mind that this 
full legal tender law would be easily repealed, and in case of its repeal, 
all our successes would fail. This is precisely so, and that is the reason 
the American laborers at large should understand how important such a 
law is ; and then they would demand its passage, and when passed, 



62 By What Laws labor can secure 

there would be no more danger of its repeal than there is of the repeal of 
the law against murder or highway robbery, because, public opinion 
being enlightened upon the necessity of such a law, would not tolerate 
its repeal. And the efforts to repeal our legal tender law of paper 
money, or in other words, to take in the greenback money and destroy 
it, are as criminal, and as injurious to the country, as it would be to 
repeal the laws against highway robbery and murder, and in fact, as I 
believe, more so. Judge Lynch could, in a measure and manner, prevent 
murder and robbery by highway assassins, but it would be more difficult 
to prevent the legalized murder and robbery of the extortioners and vam- 
pires as now practiced. Yet even these can be limited and modified, if 
all other efforts fail, by the association of men who will have their own 
honest money, and let murderers and robbers, as far as possible, keep 
with their political lickspittles, and the miserable carcasses of those they 
murder and rob. 

Another imaginary difficulty may occur to the reader's mind, that 
this greenback money would soon wear out. This difficulty is easily 
obviated already. It is found by experience that the return of the effaced 
or worn greenback bills to the treasury department, and issue of new ones 
in their place, costs a less per centage than the loss by the wear of 
specie money in circulation. And all real loss of this greenback money 
by accident, is so much gained, not by bank corporations, but by the 
whole country, that is, by the labor of the country, upon which, ulti- 
mately, all the burdens of taxes and public expenses rests. 

Again, the money craft are wont to tell us that this full legal tender 
paper money, not redeemable in gold, would not pass in foreign coun- 
tries, and therefore we could not succeed with it in our foreign com- 
merce. To this we should answer first, that although not redeemable by 
compulsion in gold or specie, yet it would be convertible into either at the 
option of the holder, because it would be par with gold. And not only 
so, it must be borne in mind that a successful foreign trade is brought 
about by enlivening the industries at home, and thereby stimulating 
production, so as to have something to trade on, and keep foreign bal- 
ances, and gold accumulating in our own country. And that is just 
what this full legal tender paper money does. A country with its labor 
prospering, can carry on a successful foreign trade without any specie at 
all to begin with, because such a country sells more than it buys, and 
can pay for all its imports with its foreign exchange, and have a balance 
left, and that balance will bring in just that much specie. This again 
brings out the same truth illustrated in the example of France ( pages 20 
and 21), that foreign trade, gold, and everything comes by labor. And 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 63 

the pretended financier, political economist, or statesman, . that does not 
make the prosperity of labor the first and highest object of his regard, 
bending all theories and plans to this one thing, has never learned the 
A B C of true finance, political economy, or statesmanship. (See lines 
on title pa'ge.) Right in the face of these audacious assumptions that a 
specie payment currency is necessary for foreign commerce, we have the 
example of England more than doubling her foreign commerce during 
the eighteen years of entire irredeemable paper money, and that too 
under circumstances of great trial and national peril. (See page 29.) 
In fact it was only the national peril, the war with Napoleon, that com- 
pelled the government to be once honest with labor, and give it a curren- 
cy suited in a measure to the promotion of its rights arid interests. 

But let us now consider this foreign trade idea thoroughly. It is 
constantly thrust in our faces as though it was an argument in favor of 
forced specie payments, and an unanswerable argument at that. It is 
siid foreign traders must have specie for their purpose. Suppose this be 
so, and that the gold and silver must actually be required and handled 
more or less, it matters not how much. Is this any argument ? Make 
paper money of the country a full legal tender for all debts, the same as 
we do the specie, and we will find five men wanting to exchange specie 
for paper money, where we find one wanting to exchange paper for specie. 
If the Government should provide for redeeming paper money with 
specie, why should it not also provide for redeeming specie with paper. 
And if the principle has any sense or sound policy in it, why is it not 
just as expedient in relation to other property as to money or currency? 
Here is a man who has just bought a farm, and now he must have a 
team, of course ; and all over the country here and there men are 
constantly coming into circumstances requiring teams. Is that any rea- 
son why the government should keep, or make provision to be kept by 
corporations, supplies of teams to be exchanged on demand of every 
person, for other property that may be offered? If the principle is good 
in relation to money it is good in relation to teams and all other prop- 
erty, and the government should provide by corporations or otherwise 
for the keeping of great reservoirs of property of all kinds all over the 
country to be exchanged on demand of every person for such other prop- 
erty as may be offered by certain fixed rules of relative value. This is 
the result that we come to if the fact that specie must be had for foreign 
trade argues anything in favor of forced specie payments. Away with 
this specie basis or specie payment fiction, and make our paper money 
all a full legal tender for debts the same as specie, and let the quantity 
be so regulated as to enliven labor and business at all times, and there 



64 feV What laws labor can SECtfRfc 

will never be any difficulty in procuring specie any more than any other 
property, as we have already seen in chapters 7 and 8. With an hon- 
est money system, nothing is easier to accumulate and become a drug 
in the market than specie. The difficulty of getting specie, and the pre- 
mium on it, are all created by the specie basis fiction and by laws mak- 
ing contracts payable in specie only, or allowing the same to be done. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



HOW TO REGULATE THE QUANTITY OF MONEY. 



In the last preceding chapter we stated the rule that the only true 
and reliable basis to the value of money was the law of full legal tender 
for the payment of debts. By this we mean that the law of legal tender 
is the principle, or to speak figuratively, the kind of material out of 
which the basis or foundation to the value of our money is to be shaped 
and constructed. 

Granite rock is a good material for the foundation to a building, but 
that is not saying that a pebble or chip of this rock would answer, nor 
that a great solid ledge impossible to be brought to the proper place 
would do, nor any other rock three cornered or oval, or otherwise, crude 
in shape, nor yet any heterogeneous pile of crude stones, unless these 
things be fashioned in shape and quantity and leveled to suit the size of 
the building and its character designed. So although legal tender is 
the true principle for reliable money basis, and the only reliable one, 
yet that is not saying that any reckless application of the principle with- 
out any regard to the extent or regularity of the application, would 
answer the purpose, nor would it by any means. Herein is one of the 
Shylock tricks. Failing otherwise to destroy our confidence in the legal 
tender principle, they manage to bring about a false or reckless appli- 
cation of it, and thus induce us to consent to abandon it and accept of 
their dead-fall fabrications. When a wise master builder has selected his 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 6$ 

material suitable for a foundation, something that he knows will not 
crumble or slip from under his building by reason of its weight, nor yield to 
either the wear of the elements nor yet to the force of time, then he brings 
this material to the right place and fashions it according to the size and 
uses of the intended building, bringing to his use therefor, the squarej 
the level and the plumb. So we having found the genuine, solid and 
enduring principle upon which to base our money system, to wit: the 
law of full legal tender, now let us proceed to fashion it into shape and 
size suited to our great and important purpose, important to the safety 
and well being of nearly every man, woman and child in the nation, and 
of our domestic animals even. 

We are told by the money craft that this law of full legal tender 
paper money, without forced specie payments, or irredeemable paper 
money, as they call it, means inflation. There need be no difficulty at 
all on this score. Men not wanting a thing to be done are apt to 
discover great difficulties in the doing of it. Let all money be convert- 
able at the option of the holders into government bonds, bearing a just 
rate of interest, say 3.65, or one cent a day on a hundred dollars. Then 
let the greenback money issue, and increase in quantity, in the pay- 
ment therewith by the government of its expenses, as all greenback 
money was originally issued. As soon as money becomes so plenty in 
any part of the country that it cannot be used or loaned to others at a 
net profit of $3.65, any excess above what could be so used or loaned 
would be returned to the nearest government depository, and bonds to 
an equal amount, bearing 3.65 rate per cent, interest, obtained. And 
then, if at any time money becomes so scarce as to be worth more than 
3.65 per cent, net profit or interest, bonds would be returned to the 
depository and money obtained therefor, thus constituting a self regu- 
lating system, always conforming the supply of money to the interests of 
labor and useful trade, instead of leaving these interests at the mercy of 
extortioners, as is now done. Not only would it be thus placed beyond 
the power of money dealers and sharpers to control the amount or circula- 
tion of the money of the country, but a great want would be supplied in 
the conforming of the amount of money to the ever varying necessities 
of commerce in this particular, for, as is well known, at some seasons of 
the year, when the farm produce is being mainly moved and marketed, 
a much greater amount of money is needed to circulate than at other 
seasons. 

Still another great benefit would be derived from this inter-convert- 
ible system. By degrees all the outstanding government bonds could 
be redeemed, and 3.65 rate per cent, bonds be issued in their stead. 

5 



66 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

The bonds are non -taxable by any state or local authority, which now 
works great hardship. But under this inter-convertible system, any man 
lending money, would have his choice to lend to the government and 
take a non taxable bond, or to some private person or corporation, and 
take a taxable note. If he loaned to any but the government, he would 
require 3.65 rate per cent, interest, with such further rate added thereto 
as would cover the taxes to be paid on his note ; so it would amount to 
this, that while the bondholder would pay no tax, "yet he would draw 
that much less rate of interest than the note holders, and would, there- 
fore, be on an equality with them in respect to net profits. Now it will 
be observed that, when labor and business shall revive so that people of 
all occupations can change the investments of their capital without 
ruinous losses, then the business of loaning money both to the govern- 
ment and individuals will be open for competition to all, so that the 
bondholder standing on an equality with the note holder in respect to 
net profits on his capital both will also stand on equality with all other 
investors of capital, and the hardship growing out of the non-taxation of 
bonds will be done away entirely. 

This full legal tender inter-convertible system would in a short time 
bring the paper money, the gold money, the silver money, and the gov- 
ernment bonds, all to an equal value and keep them so. We have done 
away with bank note reporters and counterfeit detecters, and now we 
can just as well adopt a full, honest system of money and government 
bonds, and thus do away with the quotations of the prices of gold, silver 
and government bonds. The occupations of the Shylocks, the brokers 
and gold dealers, would then be gone. No such thing as buying bonds 
any more, with paper money depreciated fifty per cent, as compared with 
gold, and then by corrupting Congress to pass laws repudiating the peo- 
ple's money, get them appreciated to twelve per cent, above gold, as was 
done by some of our bondholders. I do not claim that it is absolutely 
certain that inter-convertibility with bonds would be a perfect regulater of 
the quantity of money in the new States and Territories. But any imper- 
fections, if any, could be remedied by Dr. Benjamin Franklin's system 
of loan offices, mentioned in chapter 27. 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 67 



CHAPTER XXII 



GOVERNMENT BONDS AND IMPORT DUTIES— HOW TO BE 

PAID. 



We are told that the bonds of the government, principal and inter- 
est, are payable in coin, and that we must therefore have import duties 
paid in the same way, in order to have coin to pay interest with. What 
has been said in the last two preceding chapters contains mainly the 
answer to this supposed difficulty. Let import duties be paid in green- 
back money. This of itself amounts to a transaction of about #160,000,- 
000 per year, or about half a million of dollars per day, upon the average, 
in all of which business the government dishonors its own paper money. 
Let it cease in this manner and otherwise to dishonor its own money, 
and then let it increase the greenback circulation so as to revive the 
industries and start the accumulation of specie in the country, as 
explained in chapters 7 and 8, and very quickly will the greenback 
be par. 

By the revival of the industries and commerce the revenues will 
increase, our financial condition will be improved, and ere long these 
gold bonds, which should never have been issued, can be bought in and 
other bonds can be issued in lieu thereof, payable as to interest at least 
in greenback money, as well as coin, and at a lower rate of interest, say 
3.65, and made inter-convertible with money, as explained in the last 
preceding chapter. And then let us follow the French rule in this also, 
issue no more government bonds payable in coin alone, especially so far 
as the interest is concerned. It is much safer to stipulate to pay the 
principal of the bonds in specie than the interest, because by establishing 
the right kind of currency we can set in motion all our industries, and in 
the course of a few years accumulate specie to meet any necessary obliga- 
tions in the long future. 

How artful the bullionists and credit mongers were in the matter 
of these bonds. First, the greenback money was not to be a legal tender 
to pay the interest, but this must be paid in coin. Then afterwards, 
though, as Thaddeus Stevens says, the laws were plain and explained on 



68 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

the floor of Congress by the chairman of the committee of ways and 
means (himself) a dozen times to mean that the principal was to be paid 
in any lawful money, when the bond bills were on their passage, yet, on 
the 1 8th of March, 1869, a law was passed so far repudiating the green- 
back money as it was originally issued, as to require the principal also of 
the 5-20 bonds amounting to some #1,500,000,000, to be paid in coin. 
This act of repudiation was hardly surpassed by that of the 12th of Feb- 
ruary, 1873, demonetizing silver for all sums above $5.00; thus requiring 
the bonds which up to that time had been payable in gold or silver to 
be paid; in gold alone. 

It is submitted that as a matter of strict law and justice no money 
obligation public or private, should ever specify in what kind of money 
it should be paid ; and if it does so, the specification should be null and 
void, and it should be the right of the debtor to pay it in such legal tender 
money as should be lawful at the time of payment. Whatever is money 
for one man or one purpose, should be money for all men and all pur- 
poses under the jurisdiction of the government. The money of the country 
is under the complete control of Congress, and the existing system of 
money can be changed at any time, both as to the material made of, and 
its denominations also, being responsible before the country for the proper 
adjustment of the relative values of the denominations of the old and new 
systems, so as to do justice between debtor and creditor. How can it be 
otherwise ? Suppose a mountain of gold should be discovered making 
gold as abundand as lead or iron. How quickly would the bondholders 
claim that Congress had this power. In fact they have already affirmed 
the existence of this power of Congress by invoking the two acts of 
March 18, 1869, and February 12, 1873, above named. If this power 
can be exercised when it favors the bondholders, strange if it cannot be 
exercised when justice requires it in favor of the people. It is submitted 
that no Congress has power, either directly or indirectly to prescribe a 
system of money that cannot be changed or modified at any time by a 
subsequent Congress. Money is strictly a creature of law, and Congress 
should not, under the plea and excuse of dangerous powers, leave the 
money of the country to be issued, expanded and contracted, and 
otherwise manipulated by the irresponsible money craft to the destruction 
of the people's most sacred rights as has been done in times past. 

It is said by the bond holders, and I am sorry to say sometimes 
repeated by some laborers, that the payment of bonds in greenbacks 
would be no payment. That it would only be exchanging one obligation 
for another. Just as though a greenback bill made a full legal tender 
for all debts, could not be used by a bond holder to buy anything he 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 69 

might want, or pay any debt, just as much as any other person. There 
is no end to the sophistries or impudence of the money craft in their 
efforts to be made a privileged class at the sacrifice of all necessary uni- 
formity and justice in financial affairs. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



CAUSE OF THE DARK AGES. 



Nothing can be more ruinous to national prosperity and the rights 
of labor than irregularity in the supply of the money of the coun- 
try. Hence, the total unfitness of specie as a sole dependence, either 
for money or the basis of money. Formerly, copper bronze metal 
was chiefly used for the money of the Roman Empire. Upon the return 
of Caesar, however, from his ravages in the north and west of Europe, 
he brought with him, to Rome, an immense supply of gold and silver. 
The bronze money was then thrown aside, and the gold and silver sub- 
stituted. It was thought something better than bronze was found for 
money, but by degrees, in time, the gold and silver wore out* in its circu- 
lation and was used up for ornamental and luxurious purposes. There was 
not that facility to renew the supply as there had been of the bronze money, 
the European mines being mostly exhausted, the rulers were either too 
ignorant or too corrupt and in the interest of the extortioners to supply 
the deficiency with other material. The result was, at length, a great 
destitution of money. Labor was crushed, or oppressed, and by degrees 
there followed the decline of the Roman empire, and upon the world 
there came that gloomy night of history called "The Dark Ages," 
characterized by a shrinkage of wealth and poulation, and a great prev- 
alence of idleness, vice and ignorance. 



70 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 



CHAPTER XXIV, 



DEFINITIONS, BREVITIES, AND RULES RELATING TO 
LABOR, MONEY AND NATIONAL FINANCE. 



i. Labor, money, and national finance have an insuperable rela« 
tion to each other, and neither of these subjects can be properly dis- 
cussed without incidentally bringing in the other two. 

2. Labor is the source of all wealth and prosperity, and indispen- 
sable to every good. 

3. Money is that which is a legal tender for the payment qf debts 
and taxes. 

4. National finance, properly speaking, signifies the revenues ana! 
money resources of the national government. 

5. Currency is that which is commonly accepted in payment of 
debts, whether it be a legal tender therefor or not. 

6. The best system of money is that system that, most justly 
rewards and -promotes labor. This is the true test. 

7. Every law affecting the money of the country, that cannot be 
shown to promote labor, is a fraud, or mistake of policy. 

8. The first great law of money is, that whatever is money for one 
man or one purpose, should be money for all men and all money purposes 
throughout the nation. 

9. The second great law of money is, that nothing should be 
allowed to issue to circulate as money except that which is money, that 
is, a full legal tender for paying all debts, taxes and imposts. This 
second law should be taken in connection with the next, or third law. 

10. The third great law of money ts, that the supply of money in 
circulation should be such that money to loan will bring, as near as may 
be, the same percentage of net profits as upon the average, capital 
judicially invested and managed in farming and manufacturing will bring, 
and no more. 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 7 1 

ii. The best material for money is that which answers best the 
following requirements : Convenience in handling, durability, voidness 
of intrinsic value, susceptability of being so coined as to be most diffi- 
cult to counterfeit, and capable of being indefinitely increased in quan- 
tity and amount. 

12. No material has yet been found or made that answers so well 
the proper requirements for money as paper. 

13. The discoveries and improvements in paper making and print- 
ing having offered us facilities far superior to those of the ancients for 
establishing money upon true principles, these facilities must be improved 
so as to conform our money to the improvements in other affairs. 

14. With old moss backed money theories saddled upon us, our 
rapid production of property by the aid of new arts and machinery, will 
only result in huge accumulations of wealth to crush out the liberties of 
those that produce it, and our theories of equality, inalienable rights and 
self government will soon come to nothing. 

15. Though paper is the best material for domestic currency, yet we 
see no need of demonetizing silver or gold, which are commodities used, 
for the most part nominally to facilitate foreign commerce. 

t6. Neither the intrinsic value of material that monev is made of, 
or the intrinsic value of anything it may promise, as gold or silver or 
precious stones or diamonds, or anything else, can form any reliable basis 
to the value of money, nor can anything form such reliable basis but the 
law of full legal tender. 

17. A clear distinction should always be kept up between monev 
and money promises. The money may on its face have a promise, or 
any other foolish thing, but by no means should the use of the money as 
such be affected by such folly. 

18. It is plain, that if the first great law of money, given in the 8th 
paragraph above, was established as a rule, the government could issue 
no bonds or money obligations not pavable in any lawful money of the 
countrv, nor could it impose any taxes, excises or custom duties not 
payable in the same manner, nor could it allow any of these things to be 
done by any local authority or individual. This of itself would be a 
revolution in our monev and finances, in favor of equality and against 
class privileges and powers. 

19. There are two strong reasons for adopting and enforcing the 
second great law of monev above given in the ninth paragraph of this 
chapter. The first of these reasons is because nothing but the law of 
full legal tender being any safe basis for the value of monev. anything 
going into circulation without that basis is likely to cause losses to the 



72 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

people. The second of said reasons is, because the national government 
being charged by the constitution with the entire control of the money 
of the country, that government should not be interfered with by any- 
thing coming into circulation as money or in lieu of money, except that 
which the national government itself shall issue or cause to be issued as 
money. 

20. The supply or quantity of money could be regulated according 
to the third great law of money, stated in the 10th paragraph, by inter- 
convertibility with government bonds, bearing a just rate of interest, as 
explained in chapter twenty-one ; and, if need be, in localities where 
the bonds are lacking, by the Dr. Benjamin Franklin loan office plan, 
as explained in chapter twenty-seven. 

21. When Congress shall have the will, there will be an easy way to 
adjust our money and finance laws aright, so as to prosper labor, 

22. When Congressmen talk of dangerous powers of Congress over 
the currency, as they frequently do, it is as if your agent to whom you 
entrust your choicest treasure should abandon it to thieves, and then as 
an excuse therefor say it was a dangerous power for him to hold. 

23. The greenback system will make gold and silver abundant, 
because it will prosper labor. 

24. The specie basis system will make specie scarce, because it will 
prostrate labor. 

25. Under the greenback system, if it be carried into effect, we can 
just as easy pay the government bonds in specie as to pay them in 
paper money. 

26. Under the greenback system, bondholders, as most all other 
people, would prefer the paper money to specie. 

27. The specie basis system has two main points in view : first, have 
as large amount of outstanding specie promises against the people as 
possible, and second, have as little specie as possible in the country, or 
available to pay with, so that these specie promises can never be paid, 
and the people made perpetual slaves or vassals in toiling to pay them. 

28. The means being used to accomplish the purposes just men- 
tioned, are to take in the legal tender greenback money and give out 
gold bonds therefor ; adopt the specie basis fiction, because that will 
make money very scarce, prostrate labor, and thus drive specie out of 
the country and keep our foreign debts, national, state, municipal, cor- 
porate and individual, all the time increasing, because these must, in 
any event, be paid in gold if ever paid at all, as the interest at least 
must be. 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 73 

29. The American, who is the enemy of the greenback, and wants 
it taken in from circulation, is a friend of foreign influences, and a traitor, 
both to labor and the government of his fathers. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



THE NATIONAL BANK SWINDLE. 



The national banking system of our day constitutes a conspicuous 
part of our grand system of legalized robbery. The national banks are 
furnished by the government with bank bills amounting at present to 
about $330,000,000, which the banks loan out on short time to circulate 
as money. These bills are made current as money by the law requir- 
ing the banks to redeem them in greenbacks on demand ; and the gov- 
ernment being security for the banks that they will do this, requires 
security of the banks by deposit with the Treasurer of the United States, 
bonds equal to the amount of the bills issued to them, and some eleven 
per cent. more. 

Now, see the profits to the banks. On their bills in circulation 
they take from 6 to 24 per cent., and no doubt sometimes much higher, 
by the aid of brokers, into whose hands a portion of their bills are 
secretly placed for the purpose of loaning. Suppose 12 per cent, to be 
the average rate of interest upon the bills issued to the banks. Upon 
their government bonds deposited with the United States Treasurer as 
above stated, they draw 5 or 6 per cent, interest — draw it in gold, and 
draw it semi-annually and without trouble or delay. These benefits 
amount to at last 7 per cent, per annum. Twelve per cent, made on 
their bills issued to them, and seven per cent, on their bonds deposited, 
would be equal to 18 per cent, per annum made on their bonds or cap- 
ital. This is over five times the average net value of capital in produc- 
tive employments, as shown by the statistics of the country for the hun- 
dred years past. Where one class of men get so much more than the 
average increase of capital, some others certainly must get less, resulting 



74 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

in many cases to actual loss. Here is one cause of so much bank- 
ruptcy, the robbery of the banks. Some men are robbed of all by this 
crafty national bank system. 

Now, what is all this national banking system for? Simply a 
gigantic scheme of unmitigated legalized swindling, and for allowing 
selfish corporations to issue and control, for their own benefit, the money 
of the country. The government has no right to thus surrender the 
control of the money of the country to selfish corporations. 

Count the interest on these bank notes or bills in circulation, 
$39,000,000, and the interest on the bonds equal in amount to the bills 
in circulation, $19,000,000, and we have now an expense of $58,000,000 
per year, paid by the labor of the country, without one particle of ben- 
efit returned. What is the use of having national bank bills, which are 
current as money only, because redeemable in greenbacks ? For what 
reason is this $330,000,000 of bank bills, constituting near one-half of 
the currency of the country, issued to these monopolies, to be by them 
stinted out in loans on short time, and at such high rates of interest that 
no producer or laborer can touch them until they come to him through 
the hands of sundry middlemen, speculators, and loaded with burdens 
of usury ? The national bank system is a curse now, and it will be a 
much greater curse when the only honest money we have, — the green- 
back,— shall be withdrawn from circulation, and we shall have no money 
except national bank notes, and none of these except such as can circu- 
late subject to the forced redemption in that most treacherous of all 
things called specie. 

Let us wipe out these national banks, and let the government issue, 
instead of the bank circulation, $330,000,000 more greenbacks direct to 
the people, and by this means pay off $330,000,000 of this national debt 
at once, and let the people have their own money, freed from the 
monopoly of these thieving institutions. 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 75 



CHAPTER XXVI, 



EFFECTS OF OUR BAD MONEY LAWS, ESPECIALLY ON 

FARMERS— THE POWER OF INTEREST ON MONEY 

—HONEST LABOR ROBBED— THE ROBBERY 

LEGALIZED AND MADE HONORABLE 

— THE PROPERTY OF THE 

NATION PASSING TO 

THE ROBBERS. 



In stating the ruinous operation of our money contraction, money 
repudiation, national banking and specie resumption laws, nothing better 
can be done than give the following extract of an editorial article in the 
Indianapolis Sun of March 3, 1877. Would to God that this Indianap- 
olis Sun were the constant visitor of every laborer in the United States, 
especially the farmers, and that they would have as great a relish for its 
great truths as they now have for the clap-trap political strifes in which 
they have no interest, but gotten up by the money mongers and politi- 
cians on purpose to keep the attention of the laboring people away from 
those same great truths. It would be for the healing of their individual 
finances, and also those of the nation : 

"At the time this public debt was made, wheat in New York was worth 
three dollars per bushel. Two bushels of wheat would consequently 
bring six dollars. That six dollars would pay the interest upon a one 
hundred dollar six per cent, bond for a year. That is, two bushels of 
wheat would pay that interest. It took a certain amount of labor to 
produce each of the two bushels of wheat. Now, the value of that wheat 
has been shrunk to one dollar per bushel. It consequently takes six 
bushels of wheat to pay the six dollars that the two bushels formerly paid. 
It takes however just as much of the farmers labor to produce a bushel of 
wheat now when it is worth but one dollar, as it took them when it was 
worth three dollars. There is no royal road to production, but the indi- 
vidual who is drawing his six per cent, of usury gets three times as much 



76 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

as he did formerly. It does not require an expert to see that the farmer 
has to do three days' work now to accomplish what he could formerly 
with one days' work. This same thing is true as to taxes. It takes now 
upon the average three times as much of the farm products to pay one 
dollar of taxes as it did in the times of an abundant currency of ten years 
ago. 

The people seem to be slow to open their eyes and take a square look 
at their real oppressor. They are ready to hit the fellow that stands 
next to them. The farmer has been pelting the railroads and middlemen, 
and no doubt they needed some of it, but if they had looked over beyond 
the railroads and middlemen, they would have seen the money power 
that has them all in its clutches. Every railroad in the nation and nearly 
all the middlemen are in bankruptcy. The railroad has failed even 
with its exorbitant rates of transportation to pay the usury upon its bonds 
to the ever consuming money power. The middleman has succumbed 
to the same devouring agency notwithstanding the large profits he 
charged upon the original cost of the articles he handled. The larger 
part of the cost to the consumer of every manufactured article consists 
of interest that has held a perpetual lien upon it from the time the first 
lick was struck upon the raw materials that are finally fashioned into the 
finished article for the consumer. 

To illustrate the working of it in the item of farming implements. 
These are manufactured mainly from wood and iron. The iron lies in 
the beds of ore in the earth, the wood stands in the trees in the forest. 
To start with the iron in the mine and trace it through until it appears 
in the plow in the farmer's hands. The mine is bonded for ten percent. 
The laborers who mine it must work at low prices for this ten per cent, is 
to be added to the cost in labor that obtains the ore. Then the ore goes 
to the smelting furnace. The furnance is bonded for ten per cent. The 
coal and lime that are used in smelting also come to the furnace loaded 
with ten per cent. All these ten per cents are added to the cost of the 
pig iron when it leaves the furnace. It then goes to the rolling mill, 
which is bonded for ten per cent, and is using machinery which in its pro- 
cess of manufacture came through this same ten per cent, usury mill. When 
the iron leaves the rolling mill it goes to the wholesale dealer, or distribu- 
tor who is paying ten per cent, and he adds it on. It then goes to the 
retail dealer and the ten per cent, is again added. Then it goes to the 
manufacturer ; he is paying ten per cent, and must add it to the plow, 
wagon, separator, or whatever it is he puts the material into. Then the 
article goes to the dealer again and ten per cent, is piled on. Then it 
goes to the farmer who is the user and consumer of it a^d he pays all the 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 77 

ten per cents attached from the time the iron started from its bed in the 
earth. The same is true of the wood that is used in the same implement. 
More than half the cost of the article consists of usury, the ten per 
cents that have gone into the coffers of the banker at every point the 
article passed. 

Here the farmers will discover the real enemy to their prosperity. 
Suppose no usury had been paid at any point. The laborers who made 
and handled the article could have been paid better and the article at the 
same time cost the consumer less. 

This same devouring usury lays its clutches upon all the products of 
the farm. Farmers who are not in debt for notes in bank or mortgages upon 
their farms think they do not pay interest — usury — and that it matters 
little to them what the rates of interest are. In this they are mistaken. 
The above statement shows that the consumer of the article produced 
pays for it, while all who have touched the article in its passage into the 
implement and to the consumers' hands have contributed to king usury 
in the reduced price of the raw material and labor. 

Take the products of the farm and let us see if they do not contri- 
bute in the farmers' hands. The wheat is produced and taken to market. 
The wheat buyer has his note in bank at ten per cent, for the currency 
he pays the farmer for the wheat. He cuts down the price of the wheat 
so he can add the ten per cent, he is paying. It then goes to the miller. 
He is paying ten per cent, to the bank and must add it to the flour. It 
then goes to the merchant, whose notes are in bank at ten per cent. He 
must also add it. It then goes to the baker : he is paying ten per cent, 
to the bank and must add it to the loaf of bread. The consumer of the 
bread pays it when he purchases that which is essential to support life. 
This ungodly usury makes low prices to producers and high prices to 
consumers, as above seen. Here is the middleman, Mr. Farmer, that 
needs your immediate and special attention. Is it any wonder there are 
hard times when this usury which has bankrupted the people of the 
whole nation, gathers annually all the wealth that industry can produce, 
and leaves a heavy unpaid balance of debt to be carried over to the next 
year and compounded at the same exorbitant rates of interest, thus piling 
debt mountain high against industry, until such debt explodes in a com- 
mercial crisis and is wiped out through the bankrupt court. Then add 
to this consuming usury the shrinkage of values by the contaction of 
the currency and demonetization of silver and you will see what is the 
matter. 

The scheme now in force called "resumption of specie payments," 
is a scheme of the money power to rob all industry of every dollar it has 



78 



BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 



left, for you must remember this people are loaded with an enormous 
debt, at a high rate of interest. The entire debt, national, state, county, 
railroad, city, town, township and individual, amounts to thirteen bil- 
lions of dollars. The average interest is eight per cent., making annu- 
ally the sum of one billion and forty millions of dollars, more than the 
value of all the surplus products of the nation annually. The usury 
mills that are grinding you are the national banks of issue. They issue 
money only in exchange for your interest bearing notes. The currency 
starts upon its mission in the channels of trade, loaded with ten per 
cent. The remedy is, to have the government issue the currency directly 
into the channels of trade in exchange for its interest bearing debt, then 
no individual's interest debt is lying at the point where it issued ; and 
have a sufficient amount of this currency to have business transacted 
cash, then you will not be in debt and not be paying usury. For usury 
grows on debt. Then the money power will have no interest in you, for 
it will hold no debt over you drawing usury, and consequently will not 
be interested in shrinking the value of your products so that it can draw 
all your substance from you and make paupers of the producers, while it 
makes millionaires of the bond holders. Examine this, Mr. Farmer, 
and see if we tell the truth." 



V 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 79 



CHAPTER XXVII 



IN NEBRASKA, AND ALL THE STATES AND TERRITORIES, 
WE CAN HAVE GREAT PROSPERITY — THE PLENTY 
OF MONEY AT MONEY CENTERS, DODGE— DR. 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S LOAN OFFICES 
SYSTEM—THE- SOUTH— GRASSHOP- 
PERS — LAZY AMERICANS- 
OVER PRODUCTION, 
&c, &c. 



There is not the least particle of necessity of such a miserable con- 
ition of labor and general finances as exists in this country. On 
page 9 is shown the universal and great prosperity of labor that now 
exists in France ; and on page 28, that wonderful prosperity in England 
from 1797 to 1815. We may not only have such prosperity as that in 
this country, but we may have it in every State of the Union, the new 
States as well as the old. Take Nebraska, for example. We do not 
need to wait the arrival of capital here. Capital enough has been 
brought here already to give us great prosperity. Our capital is mainly 
in the soil, and we have plenty of it, but it is almost dormant for want of 
money to go with it, and the trouble is our capital and earnings are 
swept Eastward by enormous usury. If farmers here could borrow money 
at six per cent, interest, they could invest it in pork raising, and make 
millions of wealth out of Nebraska soil, and at great profits to themselves. 
And this very process of making profit would soon bring up the price 
and value of lands in Nebraska to three times what it now is. Surely, 
by nature, ours is one of the best, and probably the best State of the 
Union for pork raising, because of the healthfulness of hogs here, and 
which healthfulness, it is believed, will continue. And so is our State 



8o BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

highly adapted to the raising of wool and the manufacture of the same 
into cloths. It is highly suited also to all stock raising. In our 
Nebraska soil we have a great amount of capital that at present is ren- 
dered nearly worthless, comparatively, for the want of a circulating 
medium of sufficient amount to go with it. 

From 15 to 30 per cent, interest is nothing uncommon to be paid in 
Nebraska. Not long since, in one case, good county bonds, to the 
amount of $3,800.00, were sold at 75 cents on the dollar, bearing ten 
per cent, interest, payable annually, and having twenty years to run. 
Such a transaction would never occur in a community properly governed. 
Besides the interest being much too high, nine hundred and fifty dollars 
was taken out at the first, being the 25 per cent, discount. In its effect 
on the business of the community, it is the same as if a thief had stolen 
property to the amount of $950.00, and fled. And it should startle 
both the community and government to devise ways and means to pre- 
vent the like occurrence again. But very few lay it to heart, however. 
It is our common, lawful and honorable scale of business. And this 
commonality of it is what makes it ruinous to us. By it we are being 
more and more mortgaged to Eastern and European capitalits and 
deprived of our means of comfort, business and safety. Most of the 
farms of our State and the West are under mortgage at ruinous rates of 
interest. 

Let us keep constantly in mind that herein is the legal tender or 
greenback system of money superior to the specie basis system, because 
paper money, made a full legal tender for all debts within the realm or 
country, the same as gold, will keep par with gold, and yet may be issued 
in just such quantity and supply as needed to prevent monopoly over it 
by money dealers, keep the rates of interest at a just standard, and enliven 
the labor and trade of the country. Thus will the earnings of labor 
be left with the laborers themselves properly, and not be swept from 
them by extortioners. 

But we are told that there is plenty of money in the country, because 
in New York it can be had for 5 or 6 per cent. What nonsense is this? 
Because there is plenty of money at the great money center or a dozen 
money centers, is no proof that there is a plenty in the country. This 
plenty of money gossip has been started and is urged by sharpers whose 
interest it is to make us believe it. How is it that in 1865, and 1866, 
when we had in circulation more than twice as much money as we now 
have, the country prospered mightily, and now we are oppressed ? 

Let the government of this country put in circulation two and a half 
times as much money per capita as we now have, and as much as France 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 8l 

now has, and it will produce results akin to those in France. This is 
proved by our experience of 1865 and 1866. The people of this country 
certainly need as much circulating medium per capita as the French peo- 
ple, and in fact much more, on account of our thinner population, and 
wider extent of home commerce. What good can. a surplus of money in 
New York do a Nebraska farmer? This New York money is held by 
men that are able to hold it. They have no need of coming out here to 
better their condition. They live at ease. They would rather loan their 
money in New York at five per cent., and have it safe under their eye, 
than send it here for ten, not because it is less safe here, but because 
they do not know. Very few will send money here at all, and those few 
commit it to loan agents here, who require twelve per cent., and then a 
a bonus of some ten per cent, in advance for themselves. A very few 
agents can do all the loaning and there is no competition. They charge 
what they please, and the more they charge the more likely they are to 
have jobs of foreclosing mortgages, for they are generally lawyers and 
collectors. Thus we are robbed. Our little profits are swept from us. 
Our lands of course are of little value, because of this robbery. We must 
entreat and beg, go to great trouble, and pay for a great amount of red 
tape and pay double interest, and a ruinous bonus to get a little money, 
if indeed we get any at all. This very business keeps our currency at the 
money centers, makes all the world afraid of our credit, makes us help- 
less before the hardships and dangers of the new country, keeps out 
settlers and retards the progress of the country. Now let us have at least 
two and one-half times per capita as much money in circulation as we 
now have ; and then, as in France, everybody will be prospering, credit 
will be good, and, as in that country, money will be "to be had almost, 
for the asking." 

Can it be thus in the new States? It certainly can, and in every 
other place; and that very easily. Let the government quit issuing 
money to the national banks, and adopt the interconvertible greenback 
system of money. This would do the work certainly for the most part, 
and we believe wholly. But if upon its adoption there should perchance 
in the new States be yet a remnant of extortion left, then certainly a 
touch of the Dr. Benjamin Franklin system of government loan offices 
would finish the work. In 1729 Dr. Franklin wrote a pamphlet on the 
subject of money. Shortly afterward the legislature of the Pennsyl- 
vania colony adopted a system embracing his principles, which system, 
being improved upon from time to time under his auspices, was more 
or less copied after in some or all of the other colonies, and produced 
wonderful prosperity wherever adopted, and is so spoken of by various 
European authors. 



82 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

What was that system ? It did not say to the farmer, just away at 
such a point a thousand miles off, is plenty of money, and therefore 
there is enough in the country. Nor did it say if you have anything to 
buy money with you can get it. Nor yet did it pay a threefold interest 
to banks for their benevolence in taking the money and issuing it, as 
our national banking system does. Any man coming into that Pennsyl- 
vania colony and buying and paying for a piece of land for a farm, 
would receive half the value of the land in legal tender paper money 
not, however, exceeding a hundred pounds sterling in any one case. 
He was only required to return one-tenth of this at the end of each year 
with interest at five per cent, only, and his lands were held as security 
that he would do this. And that five per cent, interest went, not into 
a bank ownership, but into the public treasury, to help pay public 
expenses and saved that much taxation. When the full amount of his 
money was returned he received another issue. What a contrast between 
this system and that of our present national banking swindle. It will 
be seen, that after all it was essentially rag baby. The money issued 
was made a full legal tender for debts and taxes. There was no failure 
about it, the basis and quantity being properly regulated. 

Under this system, the colonies, or such of them as adopted it, had 
great prosperity until 1763, when the English government embarrassed 
all the colonies by attempting to impose stamp taxes payable in specie 
only, which deranged this sound system of money and finance, and 
brought hardship on all the colonies. As Dr. Franklin himself testified 
before the British Parliament in 1776, there was not specie enough in 
the colonies to pay the duties required one year. Dr. Franklin's pamph- 
let on money is very interesting and instructive to be read in these 
days. (See The Works of Dr. Franklin, compiled by Jared Sparks, 
Vol. I. page 303; Vol. II. page 254 to 277, and Vol. IV. pages 164, 
168 and 169. Neb. State Library.) 

If interest could be kept at a proper rate a hundred and forty years 
ago in the early settlement of the country, then surely it can be here in 
Nebraska and in all the new States. The tall forests that then impeded 
the settler were certainly a greater hindrance than any we find here to 
the getting of something to buy money with. 

If Nebraska were an independent nation, the first and highest duty 
of its congress would be to supply its people with money adequate to 
their business, and protect them from this sweeping usury that carries 
their earnings nearly all out of the State. But as it is not an independent 
nation, but one of the States of the Union only, it is the duty of the 
Congress of the United States to this for us. And so it owes this same 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 83 

duty or obligation to each of the States preyed upon in a similar man- 
ner. And yet it wholly disregards this its highest duty. A vast differ- 
ence there would be in the society, politics, finances, and industry of 
the whole South, if the government would attend to its duty in this 
matter. 

This should be understood once for all, that no difference what the 
hindrance nor what the condition of the country in respect to its indebt- 
edness, or any other particular, it is no valid excuse for extortion. 
Extortion is in every case the result of bad laws made in the interest of 
the extortioner. It is invariably the fault of the government, in not 
performing its highest duty to its subjects in the furnishing of lawful 
money to circulate in such manner, and in such supply, as to be beyond 
the power of the extortioners to control it. We should bear in mind 
that all this high interest, brokerage and discount, that continually 
carries away our substance and exposes us to the mishaps of the new 
country, can be easily guarded against by the rag baby principle, pro- 
vided the government will do its duty toward the labor interests, instead 
of impoverishing labor for the benefit of centralized money capital. 

But we are told that our State is exposed to grasshoppers and 
drouth, and that makes our landed security here in Nebraska of little 
worth and precarious in its nature. This is false. Grasshoppers and 
drouths are drawbacks to our State, but no greater than all States have 
had while new, in some form or other, and slight indeed compared to 
this system of extortion that preys upon us. Our disease is extortion ; 
the grasshoppers and drouths are only the slight occasions for developing 
the disease. Just deliver us from the extortioners, so that we can have 
what belongs to us, then we shall be able to provide against the casual 
pests, and thus develop the hidden wealth of our soil, and lands that will 
not now sell for $5.00 per acre can soon be sold for #20.00. If it were 
true, as scandalously represented, that our State is by nature sterile, this 
would be neither reason or cause for high interest on money, but, if any- 
thing, the contrary. 

But we are also told that our people are shiftless, and lack enter- 
prise. This is the basest insult added to grossest injury. Our people, 
as a whole, are not shiftless nor lacking of enterprise from any fault of 
theirs. All over these United States, in the country and in the cities, 
they proved themselves in 1865-6, as they had many times before the 
war in periods of monetary favor, to be full of enterprise, energy, skill 
and industry, unless it were in the South, which never since the war has 
been provided properly with a circulating medium. We are robbed of 
our means, and the great instrument, money, by which the world is 



84 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

moved, is taken from us, the most enterprising and useful among us are 
brought up in bankruptcy, and then we are told that we are extravagant, 
lazy and lack enterprise. American laborer, when Shylock tells you this 
don't go and repeat it to others for truth, but look him steady in the 
eye, and say, " Your words, sir, are untrue, and you are a base scandal- 
izer of the American people/' Give us as just and true monetary sys- 
tem, as France has, and very soon would our great hordes of tramps 
and paupers disappear from the cities, and our people would display an 
energy and industry equal to the French people ; and the results here 
would be far more grand, on account of our greater natural resources. 
The South would come forth out of its gloom, and become alive not 
only with cotton raising but cotton manufacturing. Nebraska's great 
staples for the world's market would be pork, wool and woolen fabrics. 
Each and every part of our great country would yield some special con- 
tribution to the common good and grandeur. Our people yearn for 
this work. Nabobs and Shylocks, we tell you our people are not lfcizy 
nor shiftless. 

We are also told that our Nebraska farmers manage badly, 
because they buy so much farm machinery for small grain, which they 
neglect to shelter j instead of which they should become stock raisers. 
The reason they buy so much farm machinery of this kind is that they 
can get it on credit, and cannot buy live stock in that manner, and are 
ambitious to do something. Let our money laws be corrected, so that 
they can procure money reasonably, and not be robbed in prices of pro- 
duce, and they will manage better. The reason they do not shelter their 
machinery better, is because they are so robbed by extortion that they 
lack means to shelter themselves properly, let alone the machinery. 
Those who spoil our business by instigating bad money laws, are the 
first to cry fools, because we do not perform impossibilities. 

Again, we are told that the reason labor in the United States is so 
much unemployed and poorly rewarded, is because there is over pro- 
duction. Nothing is too absurd or contradictory to our own senses, for 
the extortioners to declare in order to cover up the effects of their out- 
landish monetary laws that they impose on us. Here are millions of 
men, women, and children in the cities, towns and country, all over the 
United States, destitute of proper food, clothing, and shelter, and yet 
in the face of all this we are told that there is over production. The 
shylocks themselves being glutted with their dainties and luxuries, this 
is deemed sufficient. The sufferings of the toilers who produced these 
luxuries, are of no account, and need not be provided against. Over- 
production ! What an imposition on good sense and humanity ! A 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 85 

vast amount more production is needed ; production of food, production 
of clothing, production of shelter for man and beast, production of farm 
improvements, production of open mines, production of machinery, 
production of public roads, production of railroads, and other public 
improvements; and then over and above our own wants, any amount of 
production is needed for foreign export, to bring the wherewith to pay 
or buy in our foreign gold bonds, fastened upon us by corrupt rule, and 
to bring back our gold and silver worse than fooled away. Overpro- 
duction ! Oh, you Monied Oligarchy ! Where will your insolence 
cease ? 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



ALL THE TIME, WITHOUT INTERRUPTION, WE CAN HAVE 
GREAT PROSPERITY OF LABOR. 



We are told that this greenback or legal tender system of money 
would cause prosperity for a time but by and by would have a failure. 
To this we answer that the principle of legal tender paper money, with 
proper regulation as to quantity, is the only one that does never fail. It 
is for this cause that the English chambers of commerce are desiring 
some assimilation of British finances to those of the French, so that 
they may be rid of panics and crises. 

Our greenback system of money, or American system, so-called, 
has two points distinctly in view, as advocated by its friends : ist, the 
basis of full legal tender for debts j and, 2d, the quantity issued to be 
limited by inter-convertibility with government bonds, bearing a just 
rate of interest, so that in case more money is in circulation than can be 
profitably used, it will be retired, and government bonds be issued in its 
place, and vice versa. This is for stability and uniformity, and to guard 
especially against failures, panics and crises — the very things that Shy- 
locks, brokers and usurers are fond of. 

Under this system, by this rag baby rule, we may, if we will, not 
only wake into great activity and prosperity the industries and trade of 
all this great country, but may continue it indefinitely. The examples 
of Venice and Holland, of France, of our own country, and of Eng- 



86 BY WHAT LAWS LABOR CAN SECURE 

land, even, if properly studied, show the feasibility of this. Let it be 
distinctly understood that the withdrawal of the greenback or legal ten- 
der moneys from circulation, as now proposed by the Secretary of the 
Treasury and other leading functionaries, means a return to the old sys- 
tem of specie basis, the system of false pretenses, collapses, panics, 
crises, undue expansions and contractions, swelling and shringage of 
prices, all for the purpose of extortion, and the systematic robbery of 
labor by periodical bankruptcies. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 



LETTER OF EX-U. S. TREASURER F. E. SPINNER— HIS 
OPINION AND LONGING DESIRE. 



Possibly some laborer, even after reading this work thus far, may- 
doubt the soundness of its doctrines ; or, perhaps, though believing 
them true, may doubt whether they are as important as herein regarded. 
The force of life-long teaching by the money changers, cunningly put 
forth through every available channel and means, though ever so false 
and unjust, has made impressions on most minds that are almost impos- 
sible to be effaced. That it may not be thought impossible nor improb- 
able, even, that these teachings of the money changers is untrue, and 
that it is possible for something of great importance to be learned on 
the subject in after life even, we present the following extract of a letter 
of Hon. F. E. Spinner, who, having already held sundry positions of 
great trust, both under State and national authority, was appointed Treas- 
urer of the United States by President Lincoln, in 1861, and held the 
office fourteen years, under Lincoln, Johnson and Grant, and then 
resigned in 1875, at tne a S e °f 73 years. In a letter to John G. Drew r 
of New Jersey, dated August 16th, 1875, after his resignation, Mr. 
Spinner, said, amongst other things, the following: 

"Educated as I was in the hard money school, I have had haid work 
to unlearn what I was taught as being truisms in political economy, and to 
rid my mind from pre-conceived and, as I now believe, erroneous id eas- 



GREAT AND LASTING PROSPERITY. 87 

My experience in the treasury has been to me a very practical 
school, and I must have been blind not to have seen the errors of the 
popular theories that have been accepted as settled truths by the various 
commercial peoples of the world. * * * * 

I hope to live yet long enough to see Congress make a beginning in 
the right direction, by passing an act authorizing the issue of a bond 
bearing a low rate of interest, that can, at the will of the owner, be con- 
verted into a legal tender government note, and the note in like manner 
be again convertible into such bond. 

This once accomplished and working as you and I believe for the 
benefit of the whole people, other important and beneficial reforms 
would soon follow. 

The Shylocks foresee all this — hence their fierce opposition." 

There are several things important to be noticed in the above 
extract : 

1. The age, great practical experience, ability, and life-long unim- 
peached honesty of the writer. 

2. That when an old man, he found out by his experience in the 
U. S. Treasurer's office that things he had been taught in his hard money 
education to be truisms, (that is, self-evident truths,) were, in fact, not 
truths at all. 

3. He wants to see our legal tender inter-convertible money and 
bond system adopted, such as urged in this work. 

4. His expression, " I hope to live yet long enough to see — " &c, 
showing the immense importance that he attaches to this system of 
money; he wants to see the country blessed with its fruits before he 
closes his long and useful life. God grant that this his longing wish 
may be gratified, and also that you, worthy reader, may be instrumental 
in helping to bring about the gratification of this his great desire. And 
whatever doubts you may now have of the truthfulness or the great im- 
portance of these our doctrines, may the examples of this great and 
good man prompt you to further and most thorough inquiry. 



PART SECOND. 

OUR PROSPERITY AND HARMONY IN ALL MAT- 

TERS DEPENDS ON THE PROSPERITY 

OF LABOR. 



CHAPTER XXX. 



HOW TO ADJUST THE SOUTHERN DIFFICULTIES AND 

RESTORE UNIVERSAL PEACE, HARMONY AND SOUND 

LOYALTY TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY. 



What is uppermost in the hearts of the American people this day ? 
I mean the great mass of them. If I know anything of their inclination, 
it is a longing desire that some way be opened up whereby they may be 
employed to advantage in bettering their conditions in life. I believe 
firmly they are ready and anxious, both races, to apply themselves with 
great energy and perseverance to help themselves out of their individual 
embarrassments, just as soon as the way is opened up for them to do so. 

Now, the legal tender inter-convertible system of money is the 
means by which to open up this way. This system of true and honest 
money being adopted, and then, as we hope is already shown, the peo- 
ple of this whole country, East, West, North aad South, will prosper in 
all the varied branches of useful labor and business, in a manner equal 
to that of the French people at the present time, or the English, from 
1797 to 1815, and surpassing either of these, in fact, on account of our 
greater natural resources. 

And what effect will this have upon the character of our people 
themselves ? Most certainly it will make them respect themselves more, 
give them more dignity every way, arouse them to habits of greater 
enterprise and industry, put them in good terms with one another, and 
attach them to the government. If one man, or a few men, white or 
colored, in the South or in the North, should feel any emotions of dis- 
loyalty in his heart, there would be such an overpowering popular love 
for the government, that he would never dare to make it known. 



92 OUR PROSPERITY AND HARMONY IN ALL MATTERS 

This is no fiction, but a truth of great importance to be considered 
in this matter, as will more fully appear hereafter. Who has not 
noticed, time and again, what a powerful effect is wrought upon the 
habits of the people of any locality by having the opportunity of acquir- 
ing money or property by their honest labor opened up to them, or 
closed, as the case might be — towns and country localities becoming 
fortunate or unfortunate by having their commercial connections estab- 
lished or broken off, or of county seats or other local benefits removed to or 
from such towns or localities. Opportunities for the profitable employ- 
ment of labor inspires the people with enterprise, industry, honesty, 
morality, intelligence, loyalty and devotion to the government, laws 
and public good. Whilst the absence of such opportunities of the em- 
ployment of labor and business profitably, engenders idleness, vice, 
quarrels, crime, disloyalty, want of self-respect, want of respect for 
others and the government. 

Take any civilized people on the globe, with such facilities of the 
masses for acquiring property by industry as the French people now 
enjoy, or as the English did from 1797 to 1815, and be assured no dis- 
loyalty to speak of can arise amongst them. Deriving such great favor 
from the government warms the hearts of the people with ardent loyalty 
for its defense. 

Therefore, to prevent all further troubles and outrages at the South, 
and allay the petty hostilities and prejudices arising from race, color 
and previous condition of servitude — whether as affecting elections or 
the public or private safety — the most important and effectual thing to be 
done is to set before the people the opportunities of profitable employ- 
ment by the adoption of the legal tender inter-convertible system of 
money. This would, without doubt, accomplish the object. And it 
would accomplish it with an effectiveness that no other remedy could. 
It would be more effective, by far, than the power of military, police, or 
either congressional or judicial inquisitions. And what is more, this 
mode of accomplishing the work, would not be attended by pecuniary 
expense, but by gain — immense public and private pecuniary gain. 

This is the only way to establish safety, peace, quietude and strong 
loyalty amongst all races, localities, political, financial and industrial 
interests of our vast country. Without this remedy, without this pros- 
perity, to be given by the establishment of true and honest money prin- 
ciples, the unrest that now characterizes our people will, in my opinion, 
continue, and sooner or later become general, not in the South alone, 
but everywhere. For one, I do not believe the American people will 
prove themselves like the English, who, by force of the military, sub- 



DEPENDS UPON THE PROSPERITY OF LABOR. 93 

mitted to be robbed of their estates by the specie resumption villainy 
of 1815-1825, and then ever since have bowed their submissive necks to 
the yoke of the specie basis bondage for the benefit of a lordly nobility. 
Nor do I believe that Americans ought to do this. This American gov-' 
ernmentis not entitled to our respect or support if it is to be perverted 
to such a purpose. It was established for an entire different purpose, 
and I trust, that, under God, by the awakening of the people, through 
peaceful and lawful means, the original purpose will be achieved, and, 
republican government prove a glorious success on these American 
shores. 



CHAPTER XXXI 



HOW IS THE GOVERNMENT TO BE PURIFIED AND RE 
FORMED UPON TRUE REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLES? 



The national Republican and Democratic platforms of 1876 both 
declare that there is great necessity for governmental reform. The 
Democratic platform laid great stress on this, and the late inaugural 
address of President Hayes reiterates the same thing, especially in 
respect to civil service. And the truth is somehow, in some measure, 
impressed upon the minds of the people at large, that the government 
upon the whole has become corrupt, and its functions not exercised for 
the good of the whole people; This is true. Samuel Sinnett, through 
the columns of the Industrial Age, of Chicago, gives us an extract from 
a London Times' editorial, which comes with great pertinency and truth 
on this subject. It is as follows : " We are conscious that in thus 
describing American politics, we use phrases that are very liable to be 
misunderstood. We speak as if the wire-pullers of the opposing parties 
were seriously perplexed in discovering the paths public duty requires 
them to pursue, and were looking about for a teacher who should instruct 
them how to promote the good of the country. No considerations 
could be more foreign to their deliberations. Duty has nothing to do 
with the matter. Whether Republican or Democratic, it matters not. 



94 OUR PROSPERITY AND HARMONY IN ALL MATTERS 

The object of inquiry with the leaders of both parties is, not how the 
welfare of the Republic of which they are all citizens shall be promoted, 
but how the victory of the special combination shall be attained." 

How truthful this is. Success at the polls is what is sought after. 
The real public good is of little consideration. The whole political 
game is one of success to the party and the candidate. If success is 
easier attained by deceiving the people than by enlightening them, why 
then deception is resorted to. If by advocating talse doctrines in the 
special interest of some monopoly of wealth, money can thereby be 
enlisted on the side of the party, so as to make success any more cer- 
tain than it would be to stand straight up in the interest of the people, 
without that moneyed help, then that settles it. The false doctrine is to 
be espoused and advocated. So that, take it all in all, we are at this 
time governed by politicians, and not by statesmen. 

Why is this? What has brought upon us this morbid condition? 
The degradation of labor and the exaltation of the money craft over it, 
has done it all. Labor and all private business is so poorly paid, and is 
so precarious in its success, that it is a great relief for one to get an 
office or position paid by regular salary. The remedy is to give pros- 
perity to labor. Then will the office holder not be in so much better 
condition than the private laborer or business man, and there will not 
be any such madness for office, nor will such base means be resorted to 
in order to get it. 

The counter part of this degradation of labor is the exaltation of the 
money craft over it. The national bank swindle, the extortion of 
money lending, the brokerage business, the gold trafficing, the govern- 
ment bond manipulation, and the vampirism of those who intrigue in 
political and governmental affairs for the passage of such laws as will 
enable them, the vampires themselves, to gather up the estates of other 
people at forced sales and at insignificant prices ; all these things pre- 
sent a harmoniousness and combination of interests for the robbing of 
labor, and its spoliations therefrom amount to many hundreds of mil- 
lions of dollars annually, constituting a vast corrupting fund by which 
the spoilers do set on foot and control newspapers, manipulate political 
caucuses, conventions and elections, all to the end that the spoilers may 
take to themselves such of the officers as they desire or can, and dictate 
terms and conditions upon which the others may be held, so as to con- 
trol, in the passage and execution of such of the laws as they see fit, 
and thus keep up and perfect their monetary system for the spoliation 
and enslavement of labor. Here is the great cause of corruption in our 
government. # 



DEPENDS UPON THE PROSPERITY OF LABOR. 95 

The only reform or remedy that can be applied for it is to take 
away the corrupting fund by abolishing the national banking system, 
and establish in full force, our legal tender inter-convertible system of 
money, thus destroying the brokerage business, and the gold trafficking 
business, and putting the bondholders and money-lenders on an equality 
in respect to net profits with other capitalists, and giving to labor its 
just reward. In this manner, and in this manner alone, can our govern- 
ment be purged of its corruption, and be brought back to its pristine 
purity, and made to become a government of the people, for the people 
and by the people. There is no possible way to reform the government 
except to break down and take away the corrupting fund. It is pure 
demagogism for any political party to pretend that it can be done in 
any other way. And the very identical measures for breaking down 
and taking away this immense corrupting fund are the same measures 
that will restore labor to its reward, and give it great and lasting pros- 
perity, as hereinbefore explained ; that is, by the adoption of the full 
legal tender inter-convertible system of money. 

This object and purpose of government reform is, of itself, one of 
the great benefits to be derived from the adoption of our full legal tender 
system of money. There is no other way by which the government can 
be saved from its present rapid demoralization and corrupt tendencies, 
whereby it is becoming less and less a government, either of the people, 
by the people, or for the people. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 



THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO ACCOMPLISH THESE 
PURPOSES EXCEPT TO PROSPER LABOR. 



In some of the preceding chapters I have spoken harshly against 
certain doctrines and the persons upholding them. This is not from 
desire, but to deal honestly with great truths important to us all. If 
these harsh words have gone in advance of proper explanations, showing 
their fitness, honesty and necessity, I am sorry for it, because that will 
tend to weaken the influence of this book. But if the truth be plain 



96 OUR PROSPERITY AND HARMONY IN ALL MATTERS 

that the harsh utterances are truthful, and prompted by an honest desire 
to make known truths of great importance to our countrymen and 
country, then they should strengthen and not weaken the influence of 
the book. If what has already been said has failed to show the full 
reasonableness of the harsh expressions, it is hoped in this chapter to 
supply the deficiency, in a measure, at least. 

On the 14th of April, 1774, Edmond Burke, in the House of Com- 
mons of Great Britain, in a speech on the subject of American taxation, 
and speaking of the American colonies, said : 

" Nothing in the history of mankind is like their progress. For 
my part, I never cast my eyes on their commerce, and their cultivated 
and commodious life, but they seem to me nations grown to perfection, 
through a long series of fortunate events, and a train of successful 
industry, accumulating wealth in many centuries, than the colonies of 
yesterday ; than a set of miserable outcasts, a few years ago, and not so 
much sent as thrown on the bleak and barren shore of a desolate wilder- 
ness, three thousand miles from all civilized intercourse." 

What caused this wonderful growth and prosperity? Various 
English writers attribute it to the colonial money system. But let Dr. 
Benjamin Franklin explain it. In 1774, writing in England in defense 
of the paper money of the colonies, he said : 

" On the whole, no method has hitherto been framed to establish a 
medium of trade in lieu of money, equal in all its advantages to bills of 
credit, founded on sufficient taxes for discharging them, or land 
securities of double the value for repaying them at the end of the 
term, and in the meantime made a general legal tender. The expe- 
rience of now nearly half a century in the middle colonies (New York, 
New Jersey and Pennsylvania), has convinced them of it among them- 
selves, by the great increase of their settlements, number of buildings,, 
improvements, agriculture, shipping and commerce. And the same 
experience has satisfied the British merchants who trade thither that it 
has been greatly useful to them, and not in a single instance prejudicial." 
See also a statement of this in chapter 28. 

This was Dr. Franklin's system of money. You see, reader, the 
money was rag baby, that is, a "general legal tender," substan- 
tially the very kind of money so much hated by those now in authority 
over us, and which these our rulers are bent on taking in and burning up. 
and issuing out, in its stead, interest-bearing gold bonds. If it be said 
that Franklin's money system had other guaranties about it besides the 
law of legal tender, making it better than the greenback or rag baby 
system that we urge now, we will not stand out about that, though we 



DEPENDS UPON THE PROSPERITY OF LABOR. 97 

think these other guarantees unnecessary and easier to be substituted by 
other means in our present condition of advancement, yet we will accept 
them with all cheerfulness, if by so doing we can harmonize differences 
and perfect our system of legal tender paper money. But, laborer, mark 
well what I tell you, the money craft, with all their political and gov- 
ermental henchmen, will ever refuse and never consent to any system 
that has in it the law of full or general tender. It is too honest and 
effectual in the interest of labor for them to admit such a principle as 
that. 

As before remarked, this Franklin money system, which dates in 
its commencement or adoption about the year 1729, gave the colonies 
great prosperity. Under our present money laws, ship building in the 
United States does not pay, and, be it said to our shame, we are virtu- 
ally without a merchant marine on the high seas. But under the opera- 
ation of this Franklin system of money, " ship building was one of the 
most important colonial interests. In the year 1738, no less than forty- 
one sailing vessels with an average burden of one hundred and fifty tons 
were built and launched at the ship yards of Boston. — RedpatW s History 
of the United States, p. 284. 

What was the effect of this prosperous condition of the colonies on 
the habits of the people for loyalty and order ? Dr. Franklin, being 
examined before a committee of the whole House of Commons, in Eng- 
land, was asked what was the temper of the Americans toward Great 
Britain before 1763. He answered, "The best in the world. They 
submitted willingly to the government of the crown, and paid, in all 
their courts, obedience to the acts of Parliament. Numerous as the 
people are in the several old provinces, they cost you nothing in forts, 
citadels, garrisons or armies to keep them in subjection. They were 
governed by this country at the expense only of a little pen, ink and 
paper. They were led by a thread. They had not only a regard but an 
affection for Great Britain, its laws, its customs, and even a fondness for 
its fashions that greatly increased its commerce." 

History records it as a strange piece of blindness, on the part of 
Great Britain, that for twelve years and more she insisted on taxing the 
colonies, and thus broke off this friendly relation with them and brought 
on the revolution. But no one will wonder at this who understands the 
animus that prevails in the ruling classes of England. A condition of 
lords and vassals is the ruling idea, as stated in chapter 10. This Ben 
Franklin legal tender paper money system would a< mit of no such con- 
dition as lords and vassals. It was a system under which there could 
be no such enslavement of labor as prevails in England or as prevails in 



98 OUR PROSPERITY AND HARMONY IN ALL MATTERS 

this country now. A system of equality in money matters, by which 
each laborer was to become and was himself his own lord, could not be 
tolerated and continued without creating great uneasiness amongst the 
laborers of England itself. 

By what means could this just money system of the colonies be 
broken up by the nobility? Direct legislation for that express purpose 
would be outrageous and shameful. Hence laws for taxing the colonies 
by stamp duties and import duties, payable in specie only, were resorted 
to. The very threatening of this, with the doubts and uncertainties of 
the final result, was calculated to and did derange the money and 
finances of the colonies. The mercantile interests of England in that 
strife were in sympathy with the colonies, but the money interests ruled, 
and were determined to either destroy this just and wholesome Ben. 
Franklin system of money, or, in attempting so to do, destroy this 
friendly relation of the colonies, so beneficial both to them and the 
mother country, or, if need be, even disrupt the colonies from their 
allegiance to the mother country, all of which was done. Rule or ruin, 
both at home and abroad, is the principle that guides the moneyed nobility 
of England, and this principle is being shared in now more and more by 
a similar class growing up in the United States. Be not surprised, then, 
that the English and American money craft are now united in enforcing 
their specie basis, tyranny and slavery here, even at the hazard of insur- 
rection and civil discord. This same strange insolence and corrupt 
power of the British moneyed nobility is all the time manifesting itself. 
The commercial interests of England are desirous of legal tender paper 
money, as shown by the unanimous memorial of the English Chamber of 
Commerce to the Chancellor of Exchequer, for a commission " to inquire 
into the constitution and actual management of the Bank of France, as 
compared to the constitution and actual management of the Bank of 
England ; as to the points of difference in the constitution or manage- 
ment of those banks respectively, to which may be attributed the crises 
and panics which occur periodically in the English money market, and 
do not occur in the French money market at all." The reasonableness 
and justice of the commercial wants avails nothing ; money rules in 
England. 

The soundness of the French legal tender system and its great supe- 
riority over the English specie basis fiction, for accumulating specie 
whenever desired, as well as other advantages, are forcibly illustrated by 
the fact that the French government paid $1,000,000,000 in gold to 
Germany in three years' time, closing January 1st, 1874, without any 
financial or industrial crisis, and without any interruption to the indus- 



DEPENDS UPON THE PROSPERITY OF LABOR. 99 

trial prosperity of its people ; whilst ex-Secretary of the Treasury 
Boutwell has informed this country that when the Geneva arbitration 
awarded #15,500,000 only to be paid, both the British government and 
the Bank of England interposed their influence to prevent the with- 
drawal from England of so large an amount of specie, and as a reason 
for opposing such removal affirmed that it would produce a disastrous 
commercial crisis, not only in England but throughout Europe, and the 
United States, even. This fact goes to confirm what is said on pages 20 
and 21, about the true mode of making specie plenty. And it may be 
laid down as an established fact that, whatever instances may be shown 
of the temporary absence of specie, here or there, because not needed or 
desired for the time being, any country that continually enlivens its 
industries by a just supply of full legal tender paper money, can always 
avail itself of specie, obtaining and parting with it at pleasure as its real 
necessities may require, in a manner that cannot be done by any nation 
under the domination of the specie basis fiction. It is said on good 
authority that the Bank of France is accumulating specie at the rate of 
#880,000 per week ; and that there is nothing so much of a drug in 
France as specie. As a further demonstration of the same fact, it should 
be known that said ex-Secretary of the Treasury Boutwell has stated that 
while he was Secretary of the Treasury, having procured the negotiation 
for a loan from English capitalists to the amount of only $21,000,000 
the Bank of England interposed against the removal of any part of the 
sum in coin, and our government was compelled to invest the money in 
United States bonds in London. This shows what a farce it is to bor- 
row money from abroad, especially from the specie basis countries. 
Borrowing money from abroad means simply to prostrate home indus- 
tries, and mortgage ourselves to foreigners for the things that we would 
otherwise produce by home labor, in order to enable our own money and 
credit dealers to ally themselves with stronger ones abroad, and thus 
create a great foreign and domestic monopoly, to enslave our labor 
control our government and destroy its republican principles. 

But we were recounting some strange things done at different times 
and places by the money power. The English historian, Archibald 
Allison, has recorded something that he calls "remarkable." In speak- 
ing of the irredeemable legal tender paper money, by which such great 
prosperity was given to English labor during the last eighteen years of 
the war with Napoleon, to wit, from 1797 to 1815, he, Mr. Allison, says : 
" By means' of this," that is, by means of the irredeemable paper money, 
"not only was the crisis surmounted without difficulty, but a hundred 
thousand combatants and forty ships of the line were assembled around 



IOO OUR PROSPERITY AND HARMONY IN ALL MATTERS 

Lisbon, which hurled back the French from the lines of Torres Vedras. 
A commercial and monetary crisis, which beyond all question under 
our present system would have involved the nation and all commercial 
interests in a general public and private bankruptcy, was not only sur- 
mounted without distress, but the property of the industrious classes was 
unimpared during its whole continuance ; and the nation commenced in 
the middle of it those gigantic efforts which at length turned the tide 
against France, and brought the contest to a glorious termination. It 
is remarkable that this admirable system, which may be truly called the 
moving power of the nation, during the war, became towards its close 
the object of the most determined hostility on the part of the great cap- 
italists and chief writers on political economy in the country." 

"Remarkable " truly it was, as Mr. Allison says, that the irredeem- 
able legal tender, by which the country had been saved from being van- 
quished by a foreign foe, and was then prospered in all its industrial 
and commercial interests as it never had been in all the centuries before, 
should have been made " the object of the most determined hostility on 
the part of the great capitalists and chief writers on political economy in 
the country." 

But we, Americans, need not go across the Atlantic to see "remark- 
able " things. Nor need we, for this purpose, go back in our own his- 
tory a hundred years to the revolution. The world never witnessed any- 
thing more remarkable than we have seen in our own country and in our 
own day and generation, and in fact are beholding every day. 

Sixteen years have not yet elapsed since we saw our great American 
Republic involved in a domestic war and upon the verge of disruption 
and ruin. We saw darkness and gloom, thick and impenetrable, settling 
down upon the future of our country. We saw in the midst of this situ- 
ation, "the great capitalists and chief writers on political economy, " 
as the historian Allison calls them, reluctantly yield their assent to the 
partial adoption of the irredeemable legal tender principle in our mone- 
tary and finance laws ; the same principle in effect as Mr. Allison says 
gave England victory and renowned industrial prosperity in the great 
war with Napoleon. We then saw the darkness and gloom begin to give 
way, and through rays of light, though deep tinged of crimson hue, we 
could see the way of our country's salvation. Then we saw three years 
of the greatest domestic war that ever convulsed any nation — a part of 
the time the men in arms numbered one and a-half millions. Then, 
next, we saw such an example of the complete subjugation of a great 
rebellion as the world never before witnessed. 



DEPENDS UPON THE PROSPERITY OF LABOR. IOI 

We saw all this done, and yet during the whole contest the great 
North, where the irredeemable legal tender paper money circulated, was 
not impaired but invigorated in its industries, its wealth and its power. 
And but for the fact that the government bondholder was made a privi- 
leged character, by paying him his interest in coin while everybody else 
was paid in legal tender paper, the North could have continued the con- 
test indefinitely, if need be, without diminution of its resources, its 
population or power. And then we beheld the sublime spectacle of our 
soldiery, conquerors and conquered alike, glad to turn away from war 
and betake themselves eagerly to the pursuits of peaceful industry ; with 
greats success indeed at the North, where the legal tender was abundant, 
but with poor success in the South, where it was deficient. 

Aad then we saw something else; something more remarkable than 
anything before it. We saw what the historian Allison calls ''remark- 
able " at the close of the Napoleonic wars, only more remarkable here, 
by far, than there. We saw this irredeemable legal tender paper money, 
which had done and was doing all these wonders for us, become, in the 
language of Mr. Allison, "the object of the most determined hostility 
on the part of the great capitalists and chief writers on political economy 
in the country." This hostility at first somewhat shocked the sense of 
the nation and made but little headway. The December, 1876, exhibit 
of the Treasury Department showed that in fourteen months, from Sep- 
tember 1st, 1865, to October 31st, 1866, under the stimulus given to 
labor by the irredeemable legal tender, the national debt was reduced 
$206,379,565. "The great capitalists," as Mr. Allison calls them, 
(but money craft, vampires and extortioners, as they are usually called 
in this work,) were alarmed. They saw that, at this rate, in a very few 
years the whole national debt would be paid off, according to the law 
and the contract, and neither the national debt nor the war would be 
made the occasion for establishing a nobility of wealth in this country ; 
and that in fact, if the legal tender principle was to rule in our money 
and finances, we would be much farther from the nobility and vassalage 
condition than before the war. They therefore renewed their hostility 
with redoubled energy, and have been pressing it and gaining ground 
ever since, stealthly subsidizing therefor the political parties and every 
organization possible, as also the press of the country, and the govern- 
ment, especially the executive of the nation, with his immense corrupt- 
ing power of official patronage. 

As shown in chapter 10, this hostility to legal tender, and return to 
the specie basis fiction, was necessary in England in order to restore 
and preserve intact the fundamental principle of British government 



102 OUR PROSPERITY AND HARMONY IN ALL MATTERS 

and society, to wit : nobility and vassalage. But here, in our country, 
the case is changed ; hostility to the legal tender and support of the 
specie basis fiction here does not support, but destroys the fundamental 
principles of our government and society, as established by the fathers, 
to wit: equality, inalienable rights and self-government. Now, if hos- 
tility to legal tender be so productive of human misery, or in anywise 
so impolitic or evil in its tendencies as to be ''remarkable," as Mr. 
Allison calls it, in a country where it supports the fundamental principles 
of the government and society, what should be said of it when practiced 
in a country where it does not support, but on the contrary, destroys the 
established fundamental principles of the government and society ? I must 
beg leave to say that, in my humble opinion, in such a case (and that is 
our case) such hostility is treachery, and those who practice it are trait- 
ors to the government of our fathers, whether they be many or few in 
number, or whatever their respective conditions in life, whether high or 
low, even to the chief magistracy of the nation. 

Surely, we have seen some "remarkable" things in the past, but it 
is probable this generation will yet see an event more remarkable than 
any yet transpired in this country or any other. In science and mechanics 
discoveries are continually being made, and things done that never were 
before, and the men who think that the world is going to stand still and 
do nothing and see nothing in governmental and social affairs except as 
has been done and seen in the past, will yet probably see their error, if 
they live long enough and have any eyes with which to see anything. 
The principles of government as promulgated in the Declaration of 
Independence, a hundred and one years ago, if carried into full effect in 
their simplicity, in this country of great resources, (a thing not at all 
impossible to be done,) would indeed be the greatest event, and fol- 
lowed by the grandest results of anything ever known among men. But 
I should say, that the first centennial celebration of the year in which 
those principles were promulgated or declared, coming as it did in a 
year when American labor was more prostrate than any previous year in 
the whole hundred, was more a celebration of the success and progress 
of the world's "great capitalists and chief writers on political econ- 
omy," in overcoming and bringing to naught those principles, rather 
than of the success and progress of the* mass of the people in carrying 
them into effect. 

Before making any prediction of the future, it is proper to observe 
that the American people, in the end, do nothing by the halves, and 
that is an excellent trait. It is this trait in men's characters that is pro- 
ductive of great achievements. This trait was very prominent with the 



DEPENDS UPON THE PROSPERITY OF LABOR. IO3 

revolutionists, and without it the revolution would have never taken 
place, as illustrated by the following incident : After the colonists had 
for years stubbornly baffled all efforts of the British government to tax 
them, or even to obtain any acknowledgment of the right to tax them, 
and after all laws for that purpose had been repealed by Parliament, 
except the law for the import duty on tea, and as to this article even the 
export duty from England was taken off so as to make it cheaper to the 
Americans than it ever had been before, several cargoes of tea were now 
taken simultaneously to the colonies — some to Charleston, some to Phil- 
adelphia some to New York and some to Boston. But at each of these 
places the tea was rejected by the colonists. At Charleston and Boston 
it was destroyed ; at Philadelphia and New York it was refused a 
landing. 

As to the future of the United States, it is probable that one of two 
events will take place. Either the mass of the people will continue to 
listen to and follow the counsels of the " great capitalists and chief 
writers on political economy," as given to them through the press and 
the organized office seekers, great and small, until they shall become, by 
force of their own votes, among the most servile and obedient slaves on 
earth, and this republic become a confirmed failure ; or else, casting off 
these counsels of the ''great capitalists and chief writers on political 
economy," they, the mass of the people, will think for themselves and 
act for themselves, and thus become the most free, prosperous and happy 
people on earth, and make this American Republic to become a con- 
firmed world-renowned success. 

. And now, reader, it may be that I have said many things in this 
book that were, for some reason unknown to me, unprofitable to be said, 
and left out many things that should have been said. But whatever may 
be my faults, give heed, I pray you, to what I shall now say. Whatever 
your occupation or condition of life, if you have any desire to make a 
lasting impress for good upon the world, if you desire that the time and 
country in which you live shall mark by far the greatest advancement for 
the amelioration of mankind that has ever been made in any age of the 
world, and desire to perform your part in this greatest drama of events, 
then do not seek as the highest object of your life either riches, office, 
learning, present honor, or the honor or promotion of any man, nor the 
advancement or promotion of any political party, religious creed or 
social order, but far above all these, as the highest object of your life, 
without any regard to what any or all other men may do or say, seek the 
permanent establishment in the minds of your fellow countrymen, and 
in the laws of your country, the principle of full legal tender paper 



104 OUR PROSPERITY AND HARMONY IN ALL MATTERS 

money, with just regulation for supply and quantity. The humblest 
coal miner in all the nation who does this, toiling though he may bs a 
thousand feet below the surface of the earth for a bare subsistence, is a 
greater man, and lives to a greater and better purpose, than a president 
of the United States, who, yielding to the corrupt influences of the day 
and hour, is borne onward and downward ; in fact, himself individ- 
ally a mere nothing in the midst of the great sweeping, surging flood 
of political, industrial, financial, governmental, moral and social decline. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 



SPECIE BASIS IS RUIN IN EVERY PARTICULAR— LEGAL 

TENDER, WITH INTER-CONVERTIBILITY, IS GREAT 

PROSPERITY IN EVERY PARTICULAR. 



On page 19, I stated that I expected to show to the unbiased mind, 
by this little work, that the condition of labor, the disposition of its 
profits and proceeds, the morality, intelligence, happiness, loyalty, 
peace and order of the people, purity and integrity of the government, 
genuineness and sincerity of religion, and the existence of republican 
government itself, in these United States, depend upon two simple prin- 
ciples. One of these principles relates to the quality of money, the 
other to its quantity. And the reason of this is, that these two prin- 
ciples of money fix the condition of labor, and upon the condition of 
labor, as to whether it is rewarded or despoiled, depends our destiny in all 
the particulars above named. 

I trust that the above named expectation of making such showing is 
now fulfilled. I have endeavored to make it plain, and whether I have 
or not, it is in any event true, that specie basis, applied as a matter of fact 
or real principle in fixing the quality and quantity of money, whether 
metallic or paper, would, in a very few years, destroy our industries, des- 
troy our commerce, destroy our government, destroy our civilization, and 
remand us to the barbarism of the dark ages. But specie basis, not as a 
real fact or principle in finances, but as a fiction and false pretense, skill- 
fully managed by the money craft, through their manipulation of 
the government and laws, as is done in England and as is persistently 
sought to be done here, will have the same effect here, provided we shall 



DEPENDS UPON THE PROSPERITY OF LABOR. 105 

submit to it, as it does in England — that is, turn constantly the earnings 
of the millions over to a few, a nobility, which nobility will own the 
country and rule it, whether we go through the formalities of voting or 
not. The object of the nobility will be to educate us, it is true, and 
that too with much care, but our education will be to make us good and 
submissive slaves, and not freemen, in which education, it must be 
expected, that some of us will not be easy to learn, and that in the end 
will create a commotion, the extent and duration of whose horrors and 
the final result of which cannot here be depicted or devined; but as a 
matter of public peace, if nothing else, it would be well for our Ameri- 
ican nabobery to not go too far in the tricks of their trans-Atlantic 
seniors, because those tricks may not have as smooth an application here 
as they do there. At least, there is this view of the matter : If the 
American people are enslaved, they will have some knowledge of the 
fact, and of the fact that it is the fault of the government, and will not 
relish i-t well, although they should not know exactly wherein the error 
or abuse lies. 

Whilst now, upon the other hand, if we adopt the full legal tender 
system of money, with the quantity to be regulated by inter-converti- 
bility with government bonds bearing a just rate of interest, the laborer 
will have his reward, we shall have no nobility over us, we shall have a 
people's government, we shall have peace, we shall have loyalty, we shall 
have universal patriotism ; and there will be prosperity in all the varied 
matters and interests already mentioned in this title. Our prosperity 
will not only equal that of France at the present time, and that of Eng- 
land from 1797 to 1 815, but far exceed either of them. For, take into 
consideration our vastly greater natural resources, and also the present 
improvements in machinery and the arts, and reflect that the only thing 
now needed is a system of money that will regularly reward all available 
labor and bring it into constant and earnest application to the advan- 
tages just named, and being unchecked and free from periodical money 
panics, such as have retarded us in the past, and we are safe in saying 
that our prosperity will be such as neither this country nor the world ever 
saw, and it will endure as long as we continue the true and honest money 
principles above mentioned, which will be through all time, if we adapt 
our education to the making our people freemen, and not slaves. Let 
it be forever a settled American doctrine, that republican government is 
inseparably connected with the rights and interests of labor. Wherever 
labor is robbed of its proper earnings, the mass of the people become 
dependent, servile, cringing slaves, and they vote, not to give effect to 
to their own enlightened wishes, but that of their masters. 



PART THIRD. 

HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE OF THE 
LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 



WHAT SACRIFICES WILL IT PAY TO MAKE IN THIS CAUSE. 



It would be an excellent business transaction for all laborers, farm 
and other real estate owners, merchants, manufacturers, and transport- 
ers generally, to part with one-half of all they own, in the line of these 
several business interests, above the amount of their debts, if by so doing 
they could from henceforth and forever get rid of the mildew, blast and 
rot of the specie basis fiction, and have for exclusive circulation the 
legal tender inter-convertible paper money of the government, provided 
such equal division could be made without diminishing the total value 
of their respective estates. In fact, most of the above mentioned people 
could well afford to part with all their property, except a sufficiency for 
present subsistence, rather than endure all their lives, and their children 
after them, a continuation of the present scourge, which they will have 
to do unless they go to work and rid themselves of it. 

I invite the most careful consideration and study of this whole sub- 
ject by those interested as above mentioned, to see if the above business 
statement be not strictly true ; not that it is desired or necessary to make 
any such general division or sacrifice, but that the labor and productive 
interests may be so enlightened upon this subject as to make such sacri- 
fice as actually shall be necessary to work out this great reform. Many 
persons having such interests as above named, are more interested in 
money or other speculations, or office-seeking, and these, of course, 
would not come under our rule. 

I desire, in this little work, to present a few great truths, hoping 
thereby to induce, or help to induce, the laboring people of this country 
to make a square corner in their lives on this subject. I want them to 
understand that there is a gigantic money power of great subtlety, filch- 



IIO HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

ing from them, day by day, nearly all their net earnings, and fast 
increasing in its advantage over us ; a fact that very few laboring peo- 
ple have any practical knowledge of. This power can be resisted and 
foiled, but it requires a waking up of the laboring people themselves. 

And now to the above statement of mere business interest. Let us 
take into consideration the interests of our children, our common coun- 
try, its great future interests as well as those of our day, and also the 
interests of our common humanity, and then, it seems to me, we shall 
find ourselves impelled to action by the most laudable and animating 
motives. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 



THE OBSTACLES TO BE OVERCOME, AND THE ADVAN- 
TAGES WE HAVE IN THIS CONTEST. 



In this contest there are great obstacles to be overcome, none how- 
ever that are insurmountable, and for the friends of the cause to get a 
clear and abiding knowledge of them, constitutes more than half the work 
of overcoming them. The principal ones are the following : 

i. The crushing power of our foe, the moneyed interest, depend- 
ing, as it does, for success upon this wicked principle, that the lower it 
can crush labor into poverty, the less opportunity labor has to inform 
itself of the cause of its oppression, and the less power to organize or do 
anything for its defense; thus putting it in a condition similar to that 
of a freezing man who, as the frost steals more through his system, the 
less conscious he is of his terrible condition, and the less power he has 
to arouse himself from it. » 

2. The labor interest is slow to take any square, independent busi- 
ness view of its own wrongs or necessities, and stand up united in its 
own behalf. 

3. Labor is not apt to stand firmly in defense of its own firm and 
aotive friends. Politicians and newspapers find much more cordial sup- 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. Ill 

port at present in espousing the cause of the money craft, to the great 
injury of labor, rather than the cause of labor itself, against the craft. 

4. The life-long false teachings of the money craft, ridiculous, 
unreasonable, and contrary to human experience, though they are, have 
made strong impressions on the public mind, not easy to be eradicated. 

5. The force of long existing esteem or prejudice regarding this or 
that political party, and its leaders, as infallible, even in cases where 
they are the basest of parties and men. This is meant to apply to the 
general party bias when once formed in the mind, without reference to 
any particular party. 

6. The laboring people have been so long accustomed to depend 
on politicians to shape the political issues, and pay campaign expenses, 
and nearly all party expenses, that it seems now almost impossible for 
them to have a party or cause of their own, and paying expenses them- 
selves, and support it in opposition to those same politicians, even, 
although their own judgments seem to dictate that they should. 

7. Lack of a central controlling interest to operate as a head, with 
means at command to overcome difficulties in perfecting an organization. 

To off-set these difficulties we have many decided advantages that 
we can use if we will, growing out of the justice, truth and patriotism of 
our cause, and the loathsome falsity and abomination of that of our 
adversaries, together with the great disparity of numbers personally 
interested in the success of our principles and in the defeat of those 
that we oppose. J So that we may well take great encouragement. 
Truly, everything depends on ourselves. Labor is abundantly able to 
take care of itself, if it will. The will and determination, and an inde- 
pendence of thought and action, is all that is lacking. 



112 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 



CHAPTER XXXVI, 



WE MUST HAVE AN ORGANIZED PARTY ON PURPOSE 
TO SECURE THE RIGHTS OF LABOR — AND 
THAT ORGANIZATION MUST BE A 
• THOROUGH ONE. 



To deliver the universal labor interests of the nation from the 
tyranny of a power so collossal and so subtle as the money craft of our 
own country with that of England and Germany combined, makes it 
indispensably necessary to have a distinct and separate party organized 
for the express purpose. Without this our labors will be in vain. The 
foe besets us so completely on every hand with his delusions, snares and 
robberies, that the lines must be drawn, and friends must be expected to 
keep within the lines, and foes without, that we may know who are our 
friends and who are our enemies. 

Many honest greenback Republicans and Democrats, so-called, 
have thought that their respective parties could and would adopt the 
greenback principles. Vain thought ! To show the impossibility of 
this, suppose there is a county with a large majority of the Republicans 
or Democrats therein, greenback men, so-called, say 1,200 in all, and 
1,000 of these are .greenback men in sentiment, so to speak. Now, sup- 
pose a Congressional, State or National convention is about to be held 
to nominate a Congressman or State officers, members of the Legisla- 
ture or President of the United States, or all of these. Primary meet- 
ings must be held to choose delegates to a county convention. In that 
county there is, of course, a bank or two or three of them, and several 
money lenders and brokers. Several lawyers there are not particularly 
objecting to have some foreclosing, &c, to do. The party newspaper, 
quite likely, has been helped into existence by a bank, and at all events 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. I 1 $ 

since hard times brings legal advertising to do and large delinquent tax 
lists to publish, its interests are not entirely identified with labor in the 
matter of easy money times. And also, there is a man ready with a lit- 
tle money of his own, or belonging to an Eastern or European capitalist^ 
on purpose and awaiting anxiously for this, that and the other embar- 
rassed farmer, manufacturer or merchant to fail in business, so that he 
can buy in their property for a trifle, almost without a rival to bid against 
him. The job is a fat one, to gobble up these estates, and one more 
turn of the hard times screw will fetch them. The banks and money 
lenders have special opportunities to impart fear and favor to almost 
whomsoever they will. Now, with such a circle of powerful influences r 
having plenty of time and means for wire-pulling and deception, what 
chance has this 1,000 greenback voters, kept busy at their work througb 
hardness of the times, with no organization of their own, and knowing 
nothing of their own numerical strength, to secure a majority of dele- 
gates to the county convention that will, independent of all fear or favor 
from the Shylocks and their backers, secure delegates to the Congress- 
ional or State convention who will there act faithfully in the interest of" 
labor, and against the Shylock interests — that is, work for the nomina- 
tion to Congress, &c, of men that will be faithful to the greenback 
cause ? The whole thing is almost an impossibility from the start. It 
has been tried in multitudes of instances, and total failure has beer- 
written on nearly all of them. 

Thus the great popularity of the greenback doctrines amongst the 
people, that at different times have been thought to be about to renovate 
the parties and reform the government, and liberate labor, has been 
almost entirely lost sight of, or dwindled to nothing in the party con- 
ventions, State and national, and where greenback candidates and plat- 
forms were looked for, we hear of nothing but specie basis ; and are told 
that this is the voice of the people. The whole thing is a farce, a cheat r 
and a falsehood. The people have no voice in those conventions. If 
labor intends to have any interest in this government, and have its 
rights and interests respected before the law, it must have a party of its- 
own, with a creed that will exclude therefrom the Shylocks and vam- 
pires, and not be led to cast itself away by any vain rivalry with these: 
inside of its party. 

This cause of labor is the cause of humanity as such. In its sym- 
pathies, purposes and longings it is the opposite of the other two parties- 
The two. old parties will unite together should they ever find that by so 
doing they can oppose us to a better advantage, but this labor organiza- 
tion can never unite with either of them. Truth and falsehood, light 



114 H0W CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

and darkness, freedom and slavery will not thus go together. They can 
not. The Republican party was organized in the interest of labor, and 
to resist the aggressions of the negro slave power. But while it was 
combatting the negro slave power in the field of arms, a more oppressive 
and stronger system of slavery wound its clammy serpentine coils into 
the embraces of that party, as also the Democratic. And now that same 
Republican party, having destroyed slavery of labor in one form, is try- 
ing, or pretending to try, to establish peace, equality and loyalty at the 
South while cherishing and maintaining this other worse form of slavery. 
It cannot be done. Truth and justice are not thus mocked. We are 
going backward every year, not only at the South, but all over the coun- 
try. The Republican as well as the Democratic party, has gone as 
far as it can in its usefulness until it purges itself of its death work, which 
it never will do. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



THE INDEPENDENT PARTY— ITS GREAT MISSION — ITS 

SUPPLEMENT TO THE DECLARATION OF 

INDEPENDENCE. 



On the 17th of May, 1876, in pursuance of a call properly author- 
ized, and resulting to a great extent at least from the deliberations of 
certain industrial organizations, in their conventions statedly held for a 
series of years, a national convention assembled at Indianapolis, for the 
purpose of effecting a more thorough national organization, adopting a 
platform of principles, and nominating candidates for President and Vice 
President of the United States; all of which was done. Hon. Ignatius 
Donnelly, of Minnesota, an ex-member of Congress, was chosen tem- 
porary chairman of the convention, and thereupon addressed the con- 
vention extemporaneously, and the following is a portion of his noble 
address : 

"A little less than one hundred years ago this nation of ours was 
founded. It was founded by men who, either in their own person, or 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 115 

the persons of their immediate ancestors, had fled to this great land to 
escape the oppression of concentrated and accumulated capital, as rep- 
resented in the social system of the countries from which they came. 
They took a new departure in the history of the world. They fulmina- 
ted a declaration of principles in which, for the first time in human his- 
tory, it was enunciated that all men were created equal, with equal rights 
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that to secure these 
rights governments are instituted among men. It was upon this infor- 
mation that the republican party builded its great work, when they de- 
clared in effect that the cry of the most naked and cringing slave under 
the lash of his master, outweighed all the capital of the South. It is 
upon that Declaration of Independence we propose to build a party to- 
day. We turn to other lands and find the multitude oppressed, poverty- 
stricken, trodden down ; the rich, the few, engrossing all the comforts, 
all the luxuries and powers of society. We find the old world governed 
by dollars. It was the purpose of the men who formed this nation, to 
create a nation that should be governed by men — that should make the 
man outweigh the dollar. Alas ! my friends, we have very far departed 
from that standard. In the XLIII Congress of the United States of 
America there were in the House of Representatives one mechanic, seven 
farmers, and one hundred and ninety-eight shareholders in national 
banks. And just so surely, my friends, as the English aristocracy 
have diverted all the powers of government to strengthen their class 
and oppress and impoverish the many, just so certainly must like causes 
produce like results in this great land of ours. ******* 

The sole question that to-day divides parties and tears the bosoms 
of the people of this country is whether the poor old fellow [speaking of 
Jefferson Davis, ~\ shall or shall not have the right to hold office, and that 
is all that is left of it. [Speaking of the old party issues,'] Now, my 
friends, there is a greater question underlying the present state of our 
affairs. It is, as I have said, whether men or dollars shall rule this 
country. I believe that the time has come for the formation of a great 
party in the land — a party in whose judgment and in whose heart the 
poorest man who toils in the mines of Pennsylvania or the mills of New 
England will out-weigh, in consequence and importance, Jay Gould or 
Cornelius Vanderbilt. This is a people's country, and we need a 
people's party ; and I must mistake the signs of the times if we have not 
formed it here to-day. 

See the forces that have been brought to bear against us. Every 
leading newspaper of this country muzzled ; every avenue of public 
opinion closed. The very reporters who sit on your platform are prob- 



Il6 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

ably sent here to misrepresent and ridicule your proceedings. My 
friends, the movement has sprung — I do not say it irreverently — like the 
Christian religion, from the breasts of the people. It has been driven 
out of the Jerusalems and crucified on the Mount Calvarys of this coun- 
try. But it is spreading despite all these influences, and to-day, from 
far Connecticut to the plantations of Louisiana, and from the far South- 
west to my own State of Minnesota, we have representatives here to form 
a party. My friends, plant your banner firmly, issue your declaration 
of principles, and stand by them. We saw the Republican party spring 
as if from a grain of mustard seed, until it covered this mighty land and 
blessed it ; and we have seen that tree turn into a upas tree until it has 
blighted and disgraced the land. 

My friends, let your deliberations be calm — call to yourselves all 
the resources of your best judgment. Be careful in the preparation of 
your principles. When they come, let them ring like the old bell that 
one hundred years ago proclaimed our liberty. [Cheers.] Let our 
enemies understand, that come success or failure, we propose to fight 
this battle out to the bitter end." 

The convention adopted the following 

PLATFORM OF PRINCIPLES. 

"The Independent Party is called into existence by the necessities 
of the people, whose industries are prostrated, whose labor is deprived 
of all its just reward, as the result of the serious mismanagement of the 
national finances, which errors both the Republican and Democratic 
parties neglect to correct. And in view of the failures of these parties 
to furnish relief to the depressed industries of the country, thereby dis- 
appointing the just hopes and expectations of a suffering people, we 
declare our principles, and invite all independent and patriotic men to 
join our ranks in this movement for financial reform and industrial 
emancipation. 

First, We demand the immediate and unconditional repeal of the 
specie resumption act of January 14, 1875, and the rescue of our indus- 
tries from the ruin and disaster resulting from its enforcement ; and we 
call upon all patriotic men to organize in every Congressional District of 
the country, with the view of electing representatives to Congress who 
will carry out the wishes of the people in this regard, and stop the pres- 
ent suicidal and destructive policy of contraction. 

Second. We believe that the United States note, issued directly by 
the government, and convertible on demand into United States obliga- 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 117 

tions, bearing an equitable rate of interest, not exceeding one cent a day 
on each one hundred dollars, and interchangable with United States notes 
at par, will afford the best circulating medium ever devised; such United 
States notes should be a full legal tender for all purposes, except for the 
payment of such obligations as are by existing contracts made payable in 
coin. And we hold that it is the duty of the government to provide 
such a circulating medium, and insist, in the language of Thomas Jeffer- 
son, " that bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulation restored 
to the nation, to whom it belongs." 

Third. It is the paramount duty of the government in all its legis- 
lation to keep in view the full development of all legitimate business, agri- 
cultural, mining, manufacturing and commercial. 

Fourth. We most earnestly protest against any further issue of gold 
bonds for sale in foreign markets, by which we would be made for a long 
period, hewers of wood and drawers of water to foreign nations, espe- 
cially as the American people would gladly and promptly take at par all 
the bonds the government may need to sell, provided they are made 
payable at the option of the holder, and bearing interest at three and 
sixty-five one-hundredths per cent, per annum, or a lower rate. 

Fifth. We further protest against the sale of government bonds for 
the purpose of purchasing silver, to be used as a substitute for our more 
convenient and less fluctuating fractional currency, which, although well 
calculated to enrich the owners of silver mines yet in operation, will still 
further oppress in taxation an already overburdened people? " 

The convention also adopted a resolution denouncing as a great 
fraud that part of the act of Congress of February 12th, 1873, whereby 
the silver dollar, which had been a legal tender for all purposes more 
than eighty years, was demonetized and canceled, and demanding its 
restoration. 

The foregoing platform or declaration of principles came very 
appropriately in the Centennial year of American Independence, as it is 
simply a supplement to the declaration of abstract rights contained in 
the Declaration of Independence. The enunciation of the equality of 
rights, the right to pursue happiness, and the right of the governed to 
rule, is of no use if we tolerate, as we now do, monetary laws that are 
taking away all these rights. A monetary system that will preserve these 
rights, is proportionally of as much greater consequence than the mere 
declaration of the rights, as the building of a house is of greater conse- 
quence than its plan. The plan must go before, and is indispensable of 
course ; but the plan will be of no use of itself, there must be the mate- 
rial structure. So we must have a monetary system that will sustain, 



Il8 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

and not destroy, the rights set forth in our Declaration of Independence 
and in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States. 

The following is the famous specie resumption act, which is prob- 
ably the most odious and oppressive law in its nature and design that 
ever disgraced the statute book of the United States or of any State of 
the Union, and the repeal of which is demanded in the first clause of 
the foregoing platform of the Independent party. The act is drawn 
with great care to conceal its designs and effects in the matter of con- 
tracting the currency and increase of bonds : 

AN ACT TO PROVIDE FOR THE RESUMPTION OF SPECIE PAYMENT. 

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of 
the Treasury is hereby authorized and required as rapidly as practicable 
to cause to be coined, at the mints of the United States, silver coins of 
the denominations of ten, twenty-five and fifty cents, of standard value, 
and to issue them in redemption of an equal number and amount of 
fractional currency of similar denominations ; or, at his discretion, he 
may issue such silver coins through the mints, the sub treasuries, public 
depositories, and post offices of the United States ; and upon such issue 
he is hereby authorized to redeem an equal amount of such fractional 
currency, until the whole amount of such fractional currency out- 
standing shall be redeemed. 

Section 2. That so much of section three thousand five hundred 
and twenty-four of the Revised Statutes of the United States, as provides 
for a charge of one-fifth of one per centum for converting standard gold 
bullion into coin, is hereby repealed, and hereafter no charge shall be 
made for that service. 

Section 3. That section five thousand one hundred and seventy- 
seven of the Revised Statutes, limiting the aggregate amount of circu- 
lating notes of National Banking Associations, be and is hereby re- 
pealed ; and each existing banking association may increase its circulat- 
ing notes in accordance with existing law, without respect to said 
aggregate limit ; and new banking associations may be organized in 
accordance with existing law, without respect to said aggregate limit ; 
and the provisions of law for the withdrawal and re-distribution of 
national bank currency among the several States and Territories are 
hereby repealed. And whenever, and so often, as circulating notes shall 
be issued to any such banking association, so increasing its capital or 
circulating notes, or so newly organized as aforesaid, it shall be the 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. II9 

duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to redeem the legal tender United 
States notes, in excess only of three hundred million dollars, to the 
amount of eighty per centum of the sum of national bank notes so issued 
to any such banking association as aforesaid, and to continue such 
redemption, as such circulating notes are issued, until there shall be 
outstanding the sum of three hundred million dollars of such legal 
tender United States notes, and no more. And on and after the first 
day of January, A. D. 1879, tne Secretary of the Treasury shall redeem, 
in coin, the United States legal tender notes then outstanding, on their 
presentation for redemption at the office of the Assistant Treasurer of 
the United States in the city of New York, in sums of not less than fifty 
dollars. And to enable the Secretary of the Treasurer to prepare and 
provide for the redemption in this act authorized or required, he is 
authorized to use any surplus revenues, from time to time, in the treas- 
ury not otherwise appropriated, and to issue, sell and dispose of, at not 
less than par, in coin, either of the descriptions of bonds of the United 
States described in the act of Congress approved July 14, 1870, enti- 
tled 'An act to authorize the refunding of the national debt,' with like 
qualities, privileges and exemptions, to the extent necessary to carry this 
act into full effect, and to use the proceeds thereof for the purposes 
aforesaid. And all provisions of law inconsistent with the provisions 
of this act are hereby repealed. Approved January 14, 1875." 

As shown on page 37, it is already acknowledged to be impossible 
to redeem the United States notes (greenbacks) in coin, by the late Sec- 
retary of the Trasury asking for a law to be passed allowing him to give 
out bonds in exchange for them, and also by the present Secretary, Mr. 
Sherman, bringing in a bill for that purpose while late a member of the 
United States Senate. So, we see, redemption in coin is not the object, 
but only the pretense. The object is to get rid of the only real money 
we have in the country to speak of — the greenbacks. Coin we have but 
very little of, and bank notes are not money, not being a legal tender. 
And the object of getting rid of the only real money we have to speak 
of, is to enable the land pirates to gather up the remaining property of 
the debtor class of the whole nation — a class much more numerous and 
useful than the creditor. The main financial and monetary policy of 
the government for the last eleven years has been piratical, dictated by 
pirates, and run by the power of piratical spoil taken from the people. 
Every man that raises his voice against this piracy is a benefactor, 
because he helps to scare and restrain the guilty scoundrels in their usur- 
pation, if nothing else. 



3 20 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

The following is a short extract of a published speech made March 
9th, 1868, by the humble writer of this little book, showing his consis- 
tency of views on this subject, for the last nine years, at least : 

"Ina word, this greenback currency of the United States is the 
people's own currency, issued from their own bank, under directors of 
their own choice, secured by their own capital, based upon their own 
imperishable honor, and, in my judgment, the combined powers of the 
money-changers will not be able to prevail against it, although the con- 
test therefor will be long and determined." 

" The persistency with which it is urged that a time must be fixed 
to resume specie payments upon the United States legal tender notes, is 
■characteristic and in perfect keeping with every other part of the 
McCulloch scheme. There must be a constant urging upon the people 
the doing of that which, for the time being, is impossible, in order that, 
in the midst of plenty, they shall be driven into bankruptcy." 

"This McCulloch scheme, when summed up and expressed in few 
words, is — 

1st. To hold that, under the law of the case, the five-twenty bonds 
are payable in coin only ; or, failing in this, then — 

2d. To bring into disrepute and drive out of existence the legal 
tender notes, so that there will be nothing but coin to pay with, and 
thus accomplish the same thing in an indirect way ; or failing in this, 
then — 

3d. To fund the whole debt in gold bonds upon the pretended 
^necessity of a longer time, and a reduced rate of interest. 

4th. As auxiliary to each of the foregoing measures, to contract the 
currency and make the debt as burdensome as possible." 

Since the making of the aforesaid speech, the action of the money 
craft has been more audacious by far than was then anticipated. Not 
content with committing one or the other of the first three abominable 
things stated above disjunctively, they have committed the first, and 
are pushing to commit the other two as fast as the people can be 
deceived sufficiently to allow it. 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 121 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 



ADDRESS TO GREENBACK REPUBLICANS, SO-CALLED. 



The foregoing legal tender principles of finance can be adopted in 
this country, and their great benefits realized, in just one way and only 
one way. They must be voted for by the people. It is impossible to 
vote for principles and measures when voting for a party and candidates 
standing opposed to those principles and measures. We must vote for 
candidates and a party pledged to their support. 

In the late political campaign of 1876 it was urged by Republican 
politicians that the defeat of the Democracy was of greater consequence 
than the greenback principles. And that men voting the Independent 
or greenback ticket would throw away their votes. Thus more than a 
million greenback men, so-called, were induced to vote the Republican 
ticket. Now who was it that did in fact throw away their votes ? 
What tremendous issue was up between the old parties? What did 
Republicans lay to the charge of the Democracy so horrible as to justify 
our disregard of this great subject of finance, and vote for our own 
slavery in order to defeat the Democracy? Simply this, that the 
Democracy is a disloyal party. Now we do not believe this. Their 
platform showed quite the contrary, and pledged them to the constitu- 
tional amendments and reconstruction policy of Congress. There are 
no doubt a few with disloyal tempers in the party. But that the party is 
a disloyal party in the sense represented by Republicans is not true. 
If it be, then a vast number of our Union soldiers have become disloyal, 
and disloyalty is mightily on the increase, for at said election of 1876 
the Democratic popular plurality was 241,022, while that of the Repub- 
licans four years before was about 700,000. The Democracy are long- 
ing for power, and for the emoluments and honors of office, and if once 
in power, no doubt would endeavor so to rule as to remain in power. 
This is the main object in view with both of the old parties at this time. 
Color and race and State rights really have become small matters. The 
politicians as well as people want something else now. 



122 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

In one sense both o'f the old parties are disloyal. They are both in 
league with the centralized money power, foreign as well as domestic ; 
and that means slavery to labor, and the undermining of republican gov- 
ernment, by foreign as well as home influences. Hence the oppression 
that has borne grievously upon all parts of the country, and especially 
at the South, creating in the minds of the people a consciousness that 
something is wrong, and a vague hope that, by a change of parties in 
power, the condition of the country would be better. Hence, this 
increase in the Democratic vote. If this result is disloyalty the Repub- 
lican party is responsible for it, because it arose from their misrule and 
oppression. 

Taking the pretensions of the Republican party itself to be true 
respecting the condition of things in the South, especially relative to 
political intolerance and persecution, the reconstruction administration 
of the Republican party is a failure. And what makes it a failure is, 
that it places the labor of the whole country in the cruel power of the 
European and American money craft, and more so at the South probably 
than at the North. And any government or administration that debases 
itself to such a vile purpose, is not entitled to respect from either white 
or colored people. Let the government give prosperity to labor, then 
will the different races and different occupations not be driven to 
encroach upon and destroy each other in order to live ; and there will 
be peace and harmony. 

Now, if the Republican party is itself a loyal party, and believes 
the Democratic disloyal, and therefore desires to prevent the Democratic 
growth, just let it give prosperity to the South and the whole country, 
which it could do very quickly if it would. Then will the Democratic 
vote fall off, and the mass of the people all over the country will be in 
warm support, both of the government in general, and of the party in 
power, and disloyalty, in all parties, will be a thing unknown. If there 
be any disloyalty of any serious amount in the country, the Republican 
party is directly responsible for it, because it has the power to banish it 
by giving the people prosperity, and obstinately refuses to do so. 

What nonsense then, to call on us to vote the Republican ticket on 
the score of loyalty. Every man in the greenback faith, that voted the 
Republican ticket threw away his vote, so far as loyalty and good order 
is concerned, as well as finance reform. Votes for finance reform, 
though at present largely in the minority, are not thrown away. Far 
from it ! They encourage the growth of the reform movement, and 
have a moral power, both to stay the aggressions of the government on 
the rights of labor, and bring one or both the old parties to adopt the 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. I 23 

greenback doctrines, provided anything will do this. If old parties 
want the people's votes, let them espouse the people's cause, — the cause 
of labor. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 



ADDRESS TO GREENBACK DEMOCRATS, SO-CALLED. 



The great Democratic hobby, by which more than a million of votes 
were driven away from the greenback cause at the late election of 1876, 
was that the Republican party has become so corrupt the government 
must be reformed. "Don't throw away your vote by voting the Inde- 
pendent ticket," was the cry, "but vote against the corrupt Republican 
party, and for Democracy and reform." 

How came this government so corrupt ? Because, in the national 
bank speculation and robbery, the enormous rates of interest, brokerage, 
and robberies by bankruptcy and the shrinkage of prices, many hundreds 
of millions of dollars are gathered up every year by vampires, from the 
earnings of labor, all by reason of our present money laws, and therefore, 
to maintain these laws, a great fund can be spared every year out of 
these hundreds of millions thus stolen from labor, with which to corrupt 
the government, corrupt political parties, and run newspapers, and so 
keep these laws in force, and make them more and more destructive to 
the interests of labor and beneficial to the vampires. 

It is idle, and worse than idle, for the Democratic party, or any 
other party, to talk about reform until they are ready to show how they 
are to effect reform. Putting one party out of power because it is cor- 
rupt, and another in because it is supposed to be honest, or pure, will 
amount to nothing. While the corrupting fund and power exists, there 
can he no reform. The leaven of corruption works and changes honest 
men to dishonest. If the Democratic party should pledge itself to the 
repeal of the national banking law, to the repeal of the specie resump- 
tion law, to the thorough monetization of silver and the greenback money, 
and to the inter-convertiblity of the greenbacks with government bonds, 



124 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

bearing a rate of interest not exceeding 3.65 per cent, per annum, this 
we could understand as meaning reform, because it would reward labor, 
and make it attractive. Men would then care less for office, and would 
not serve such corrupt interests in order to get and hold it ; and there 
would be no such terrible corrupting power to sway them from the right 
when in office, as there now is. 

This reformation of the government, then, by voting the Demo- 
cratic ticket is a sham, and will be until the party commits itself to tan- 
gible measures of reform, which it will never do, for the Shylocks have 
it under their control. 



CHAPTER XL. 



HOW TO CAST OUR VOTES RIGHT, AND NOT THROW 

THEM AWAY. 



The principal stock in trade of the Republican politicians in the 
late campaign of 1876 was the cry of loyalty ; that of the Democrats was 
reform. Both were a false pretense. Neither of them carried any gen- 
uine loyalty or reform in their hearts. We speak of the politicians. Their 
public acts, proposals, deliberations and topics of conversation did not 
show any sympathy for labor, nor desire to save it from being what it 
now is, a bleeding sacrifice on the altar of centralized moneyed wealth. 
Who in the last eleven years has ever heard of either a Republican or 
Democratic Convention, Legislature or Congress getting before it the 
great important fact of the present epoch, the prostration of labor, and 
then deliberating and inquiring in good earnest the way to give it pros- 
perity? No one. This is not done by either of the old parties. If it 
had been the way of prosperity would have been found and opened up 
long ago. And why is it not done? Simply because these parties are 
both in the service of another master and not labor, and that other 
master is centralized moneyed capital. Between these two masters — 
labor and centralized moneyed wealth— there is an antagonism as great 
and irreconcilable as that of God and mammon. 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. I 25 

The Republican and Democratic parties have but one master, cen- 
tralization — European and American centralization of moneyed wealth 
combined. And the point of merit with these two old parties is, to 
each out-rival the other in the service of bringing to the master the 
greater amount of spoil taken from labor and ruined estates ; and the 
master in turn smiles approvingly upon these his twin servants, and 
rewards them bountifully from time to time, as they need, from its great 
storehouse of wealth, garnered up by their help from labor. 

Can any party engaged in such service as this be said to be either 
loyal or reformatory? How much did any man interested, not as a. pol- 
itician, but as an American producer or laborer merely, save his vote by 
voting for either of these old parties at the late election ? As a contest 
between themselves, it was a mere strife for the emoluments and honors 
of office, the grand design and object of which strife, as concocted in 
the plans and strategy of the common master, was to work upon the 
party prejudices of the people, and make them heedless of the galling 
fetters with which he is binding them, while he shall incite them to vote 
for one or the other of these old parties, it matters not which ; either 
will alike strengthen his hands and enable him to draw still tighter those 
fetters, and the links thereof sink deeper into the lacerated flesh of his 
victims, the voters themselves. ■ 

At the 1876 presidential election, eight millions, two hundred and 
ninety-five thousand, five hundred and twelve votes were cast in favor of 
this king — centralization. A few of these were the votes of bankers, 
brokers, money-lenders, gold dealers, government bond holders, office- 
seekers, collectors, and vampires that fatten on the life-blood of others 
through insolvency. These did not throw away their votes. For the 
most part they will in some form or another get the rewards they worked 
and voted for. The balance of this great vote was cast by the farmers, 
mechanics, laborers, merchants, physicians, clergymen, and other per- 
sons more or less directly interested in the proper reward and dignity of 
labor. These did worse than throw their votes away. They used them 
to their own hurt and degradation. 

But all glory to the God of Heaven ! Eighty-five thousand, four 
hundred and thirty-three voters, (and probably many thousand more, 
whose votes were suppressed in the counts and returns), neither threw 
their votes away nor did worse. They voted the independent ticket, 
for Cooper and Carey, for the right, for themselves, their children and 
their country. The terrible brow-beating and howling of the politicians 
could not move them. And as the smoke of battle clears away, their 
very fewness in number, gives but increased sublimity to their indepen- 



126 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

dence of thought, and will and action, and proves them the genuine 
nucleus around which to rally the scattered hosts of freedom, to be led 
forth for our country's deliverance. 

As the effect of this Independent movement, the enemy's forces 
begin already to show signs of demoralization, even in his strongholds. 
Shortly after the putting forth of that supplement to the Declaration of 
Independence, at Indianapolis, on the 18th of May, 1876, and the cam- 
paign had commenced, a bill passed the lower house of Congress for the 
repeal of that clause in the resumption act fixing the time of resumption. 
And since the election, and long before the inauguration of President 
Hayes, a bill passed the same house to re-monetize silver for all sums, 
and this latter measure was favorably reported upon by a Congressional 
commission appointed for that purpose. These are the first backward 
steps that the oligarchy have been obliged to take in the last eleven 
years. They are important as indicating that the politicians begin to 
read the coming wrath of the people upon their guilty heads, and are 
beginning to slacken the firmness and openness of their service of the 
moneyed oligarchy. The votes that were cast for Cooper and Cary were 
tenfold, probably a hundred fold, more effectual over the destinies of the 
country than any other like number pf votes cast at the presidential 
election. Nothing is to be wondered at the great decline of gold that 
took place shortly after the election. 

Why did not these doings and indications in Congress take place 
sooner? Simply because the little band of Independents had not organ- 
ized and proved themselves firm and true in their great and noble work. 
What a grand encouragement have we, in these congressional and other 
doings and indications, to persevere and renew with ten-fold effort our 
sacrifices and labors to bring in the new dispensation when labor shall be 
permanently endowed with its proper dignity aud reward. Let it never 
again be flaunted in the faces of the American people that they will throw 
away their votes by voting for the right. This throw-away-your-vote 
argument, although repeated and acted upon by many honest men and 
with honest motives, was primarily a grand confidence game to get the 
people of the country to vote away their property and their liberties. 
And this present adjustment of the old parties to so near a tie is, with- 
out doubt, done by the oligarchy of moneyed wealth, for the purpose of 
continuing the same confidence game at the next and succeeding elec- 
tions. Let us beware. 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 
POPULAR PRESIDENTIAL VOTE OF 1876, BY STATES. 



127 



The following is the popular vote of the several States, so far as the 
figures have come to hand : 



STATES. 



TILDEN. 



HAYES. 



COOPER. 



Alabama . . 
Arkansas... . 
California.. . 
Colorado . . 
Connecticut . 
Delaware . . 
Florida. . . 
Georgia . . 
Illinois . . . 
Indiana . . 
Iowa .... 
Kansas . . . 
Kentucky . . 
Louisiana . . 
Maine. . . . 
Maryland. . . 
Massachusetts 
Michigan 



Minnesota . . 
Mississippi . . 
Missouri. . . . 
Nebraska . . . 
Nevada. . . . 
New Hampshire 
New Jersey . . 
New York . . 
North Carolina 

Ohio 

Oregon .... 
Pennsylvania. . 
Rhode Island . 
South Carolina. 
Tennessee. . . 

Texas 

Vermont . . . 
Virginia. . . . 
West Virginia. 
Wisconsin . . 



102002 

58083 

76464 

I33I6 

61934 

M379 

22923 

129722 

258602 

213526 

112099 

37902 

160445 

70556 

49655 

91780 

10877 

141095 

48899 

103641 

203077 

13556 

93o8 



1 15956 
522518 
122580 
323182 

I4IS7 

366204 

10712 

90906 

133*66 

104755 

20254 

139512 

55565 
123936 



68230 
38609 
79265 
I4IS4 
59034 
1 069 1 

23849 

48541 

277226 

2081 1 1 

171327 

78332 

98415 

75105 

66283 

71981 

150064 

166534 

721962 

51988 

145029 

31952 

10383 

41522 

103511 

489529 

106402 

330698 

15214 

384148 

15787 

91870 

89566 

44800 

44091 

95268 

42001 

130067 



21 
211 

54 



774 



18241 

9533 
9001 
7776 
200 ^ 



66 



873 
9060 
2382 



3498 
3188 



76 

712 

2039 



3057 

5io 

7204 

60 



191 
145 



1373 
2191 



Totals 



4268267 



4027245 



85433 



128 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 



CHAPTER XLI. 



TH£ GREAT CONFIDENCE GAME. 



This confidence game is a peculiar kind of game, as we all know. 
The one now on hand, to which American labor is made the victim, has 
been kept up several years, and the design of the managers, is to still 
keep it up for years to come. It is a game of gigantic proportions. The 
moneyed oligarchy of England, Germany and the United States, have 
spoken with one united voice to the Democratic party, and said, "shout 
corruption against the Republican party," and to the Republican party 
this same oligarchy has spoken and said, "shout disloyalty against the 
Democracy." And to both of these old parties it has said, "shout 
specie basis, specie payments, over-production, over-trading, extravagant 
people, plenty of money, too much money, crazy inflationists, evils of 
irredeemable paper money, worthless rag baby, better times coming, bet- 
ter times beginning," and by this means, say the oligarchy, aided by 
my great wealth, although both of you parties be as corrupt and disloyal 
as you please, we will brow-beat, bewilder and bulldoze the stolid 
American laborers, so as to get them to vote as we wish, thereby 
enabling us to fasten upon them chains of bondage, from which they 
can never free themselves, and we, trio, will rule them, and they shall 
be our servants and toil for us, and the wealth and honors shall be 
divided amongst us three. 

This is the grand confidence game. The more any of the people 
strive to be independent and act for themselves like men, the more tre- 
mendous is the brow-beating and bulldozing against them. For exam- 
ple, the State of Indiana, where our Independent movement was com- 
menced and conducted with most zeal, was made the field for the 
most tremendous political strife of the campaign of 1876.- Money was 
poured out like water. Orators, many and the greatest from other 
parts of the Union, shook the firmanent with their roaring. Such a 
powerful political onslaught was never known since the world began. 

Such is the ordeal through which the laboring people of this. coun- 
try must pass, undaunted, if they shall secure the rights and interests of 
labor. 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 1 29 



CHAPTER XLIL 



TO OPPRESS OR NEGLECT LABOR IS TREASON TO THE 
GOVERNMENT OF OUR FATHERS. 



In the midst of every distraction, let us possess our souls. Let us 
bear in mind always that whenever labor is so much unemployed and so 
miserably paid as it has been in this country for several years, the great 
leading question for both government and peoples hould be how to re-in- 
state labor ? And any party that puts away this question, and stu- 
diously keeps it in the back ground, as both of the old parties have done, 
is not a party of either loyalty or reform, and should not be voted for 
under any circumstances. A country with such great natural resources 
as ours, and yet with labor languishing for employment or reward, is not 
a free country. Under such circumstances, it is a cheat and a fraud to 
talk about postponing the labor question for something more important. 
There can be nothing more important. A government that will not pro- 
tect labor from the frauds and oppression of centralized wealth, is not a 
republic — it is an oligarchy. 

In chapters 30 and 37, this matter is, to some extent, shown up, 
and now here is the place to finish the showing. The whole truth of 
the matter is just this : In every country with the natural resources 
that ours has, or half those resources, if the available labor is not all 
well employed and well paid, too, it is because something is wrong with 
the laws. There is no mistake in this proposition. (See the first line 
of the verse on our title page.) It is strictly true, and should be settled 
as such in the mind of every voter as a standard truth. 

Now, when labor of all kinds throughout the country yields such 
poor profits to the laborer as it has in the United States for several years 
last past, be assured that, although the laborer does not get the profits, 
some persons, somewhere, do. And you can also be perfectly sure 



I30 HOW- CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

that those profits are being used as a fund to corrupt the government, and 
thus keep in force the very laws by which the persons drawing those profits 
from the hand of labor, will continue to draw them, and draw them, more 
and more fully, and with less and less trouble, risk and sacrifice to. 
themselves. And while a portion of the profits are thus used to corrupt 
the government for this purpose, another portion of those same profits 
are being used to deceive the laborer himself, (provided it be in a country 
where the people vote, as in this country,) and thus, by this deception, 
keep him voting to sustain the very laws that filch the profits of his labor 
from him, and give it to others. This, you see, destroys republican 
government in every particular. Republican principles are these : 
1st. The equality of rights among men; that is, no one having the right 
to filch the earnings of another. 2d. The right of every man to pursue 
happiness, which includes the right to work and have the fruit of it. 3d, 
The right of those that are governed to assent to the laws by which they 
shall be governed, which, of course, implies an intelligent assent. Now, 
these are the principles that make up republican government, — the gov- 
ernment of our fathers. Nothing short of all these three principles com- 
bined constitutes a republican government, and yet, everyone of these 
three principles are defeated and brought to naught, whenever and 
wherever labor is not well employed and paid, and especially where it is 
notoriously and continuously defrauded, as it has been in this country for 
several years last past, and increasingly so. 

When, therefore, two political parties come before the people, as 
was the case in the campaign of 1876, one boasting of its loyalty and 
accusing the other of treason ; the other boasting of its reform and 
accusing the one of corruption ; the labor of the country being then 
for a long time poorly employed and poorly paid, would it not be the 
right way for the people to just ask them both what measures they sev- 
erally have to propose, and pledges to make for the profitable and con- 
stant employment of all the available labor of the nation ? And, in 
case neither of them answer satisfactorily this one question, then pro- 
nounce them both treasonable and corrupt. I think this sentence would 
be just right, exactly, and the only one that would be right. And like- 
wise, it would be the only sentence that could be pronounced consistent 
with the safety of the people and of republican government. 

Yes, American laborers, whatever else you may learn from this lit- 
tle work, or may not learn, let these three propositions, I pray you, be 
accepted as true, for they are true and first in importance. 1st. That 
with proper laws, all the available labor of our country will have con- 
stant and profitable employment. 2d. That such profitable employ- 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 13! 

ment is absolutely necessary to republican government, and also to 
every other good of the people at large. 3d. That any party ruling 
year after year and does not open up the way for such universal, profitable 
employment, and every party in that case proposing to rule, and not 
prescribing tangible measures and making proper pledges for suek 
employment of labor, is not a party loyal to the institutions of our 
fathers, but treasonable thereto. You cannot properly judge any party 
unless you apply this great and strong test. Had the people applied it 
years ago, in making test of the parties, all labor would now be prosper- 
ing and as a matter of consequence, as shown already in this work, 
especially in chapter 31, every other meritorious interest would be pros- 
pering likewise. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 



HOW CAN MEN AND PARTIES BECOME SO CORRUPT. 



Most people have formed a high estimate of one or the other of 
the old parties, Republican or Democratic, and of Us leaders ; and a 
corresponding low opinion of the other party and its leaders. We 
opine that the latter opinion is nearest right on both sides at present. 

One of the greatest difficulties to be overcome in getting the peo- 
ple to see what the real condition of the country is, and the cause of it, 
is this blind veneration for party and party leaders. Party and party 
leaders being thought to be perfectly honest and wise, the citizen waves 
his own senses and refuses to see anything wrong, because he thinks that 
if there is anything wrong the party and its leaders will see it and declare 
it. A woeful mistake this ! 

It should be borne in mind that what we have seen in parties and 
their leaders to admire so much, may not after all have been prompted 
by purely unselfish motives. It is no sure test of a man's patriotism 
that he champions a good cause with the prospect of success in view, or 
when the championship is to bring him personal benefit. The citizen 
should be cautious about being led into over confidence in any man or 



1^2 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

party. In respect to parties, we should bear in mind, that when any 
party has achieved any great good, and obtained a good name, corrupt 
men press into it all the more, for it becomes the better cover for their 
evil deeds and designs. Thus the best party may become the worst. 

At the close of the war, many of our public men knew no better 
than to be in the interest of the people. But this national debt having 
been created, and the English and German, as well as American mil- 
lionaire, stock and credit dealers now taking a lively interest in us as a 
first-rate, responsible debtor nation, our office holders and office seekers 
were shown by degrees that it would be greatly for their benefit and 
ease to serve the money power and have the money power to help them 
in their aspirations for office, rather than serve the people, and have the 
money power against them. These showings of the money power were 
clearly demonstrated by actual and habitual examples. Thus our wise 
public men have learned that they can hold the people in secret con- 
tempt so long as they serve well the money craft, so as to have the craft 
to help them and deceive the people. 

There was a general surrender to the craft of nearly all the public 
men there was left in the labor interest in March, 1869, when Grant 
became President, and made the doctrine of the coin payment of the 
of the 5-20 bonds a test qualification in the appointment of offices. 
This corrupt executive rule of favor and disfavor carried that infamous 
measure through Congress, in violation of the faith of the nation, 
stamped on the greenback money. As a general thing, the men now in 
high positions are least fit to rule, because they are the same men that 
have served and worshipped most abjectly the money oligarchy. Men, 
in whom we had the very highest confidence, yielded to the money 
power, when the alternative was sternly presented to either do so, or go 
into private life. 

Labor, with ten times the amount of interest at stake as the money 
craft has, fails to see that it is necessary to stand firm by its friends and 
protect them. Ten times as much interest, we say, labor has as the 
craft, because the amount of wealth that labor can and will produce for 
itself when protected, is immense, while the gains of the craft through 
the benefit of their most partial laws are only stolen from labor in its 
prostrate and oppressed condition. 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR, 1 33 



CHAPTER XLIV. 



THE CORRUPTING POWER OF MONEY EXTENDS INTO 

THE CHURCH— SPECIE BASIS IS THE CAUSE AND 

EXTORTION THE EFFECT— THE REMEDY. 



One strong proof of the divine origin of the Bible is the fact that 
from first to last it denounces the sin and crime of extortion. It is 
human to be depraved ; it is divine to uniformly denounce depravity in 
all its forms, without fear or favor toward depraved man. 

The following Bible passage will show with what associates the 
Searcher of all hearts classes the extortioner: "Be not deceived; 
neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor 
abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor 
drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of 
God." — 1 Corinthians, vi. chapter, 9 and 10 verses. 

Do our churches deal with the extortioner as they do with these 
other characters with which the Bible classifies him, as not to inherit the 
Kingdom of God ? And if not, then why not ? Ye Reverend Divines ! 
Administrators of Heaven's ordinances on earth ! Cast your eye over 
the above list of characters, and say which of them you do not bring 
promptly to account as an offender whenever found in your respective 
churches, though the character or crime be exemplified in but a single 
act, except the covetous and extortioner. And why not these two as 
well as the other? Have you not, some of you, members who, not by 
single act alone, but habitually through successive years, have been 
taking double, triple, quadruple, and rates still higher over and above 
lawful and just interest on money, and are ever ready to take advantage 
of men's straightened circumstances for their own profit? Nay, 
more, do not these very extortioners often occupy the foremost seats in 
your sanctuaries and prominent offices in your church organizations? 



134 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

Are they not the very men most generally honored in the selections of 
delegates to send abroad to your general assemblies, conferences and other 
high councils of the church, when laymen are required for that purpose ? 
And if these things be so, then why? If those other characters that, by 
divine decree of the Bible, are excluded from inheriting the Kingdom 
of God, are by your church government punished as offenders, sus- 
pended or expelled, why is it that the extortioner, classed and adjudged 
as he is with them in the Word of Life — the Bible — is honored so highly 
and his habitual infractions of Heaven's laws passed over with such 
impunity by the church authority? Is it not because the extortioner 
is usually a man of money, and contributes stronger than most people to 
the support of the clergy, the missionary cause, the splendor of your 
church edifices and other expenses ? And will this impunity stand the 
ordeal, when there shall come the " swift witness against the sorcerers, 
and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those 
that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and 
that turn aside the stranger from his right?" — Malachi, 3d chapter, 5th 
verse. 

If money, above every other power or influence, is able to so debase 
the ecclesiastical or church governments, then is not this a striking 
demonstration, to be heeded by every person, that in civil governments, 
also, it is of all other evil influences the most dangerous and most keenly 
to be watched and unsparingly to be rebuked, guarded against and 
warded off? 

Extortion, as now practiced by persons both within the churches 
and out, is bringing every year an increase of despondency upon a great 
majority of the people, especially farmers and other laborers, and dim- 
inishing their pecuniary measures to contribute for the support of 
churches, and unfitting them for religious exercises and support of them- 
selves and families. Extortion was the sin long practiced amongst the 
Israelites, in violation of the repeated commands and warnings of God, 
until it destroyed the people and compelled the extortioners themselves 
to seek other countries in which to practice their abominable work. 
Our own country is assimilating in a measure that of the ancient Israel- 
itish nation, as described in the 12th verse of the xxii chapter of Eze- 
kiel ; thus — " In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast 
taken usury and increase, and thou hast greatly gained of thy neighbors 
by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God." 

Now, all this extortion in the United States arises from the specie 
basis fiction in our laws. Not only, therefore, should the church author- 
ities enforce the precepts of the Bible and their own rules of discipline, 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 1 35 

wherever they have any, against the extortioner, but the entire ministry 
and membership should lift up their voices continually against the cause 
of the extortion, that is, the specie basis fraud in the legislation of the 
country. There are several reasons for this, as follows : 

First. Extortion and oppression of the poor will continue and 
wax more grievous so long as this specie basis fiction is tolerated in our 
laws. 

Second. It makes some people very rich and others very poor and 
distressed, a condition of things unfitting both classes for practical exem- 
plary religion in their lives, as shown in I. Timothy, vi. chapter, 8th, 
9th and 10th verses. 

Third. If the church should thus raise its voice against this great 
stronghold of extortion and oppression, the specie basis fraud, and aid in 
exposing its wide-spread sorrows and devastation, and thus help to do 
it away, it would be only fulfilling towards millions of our suffering peo- 
ple just what every Christian and, in fact, what every friend of human- 
ity is bound to do, as prescribed in the 35th and 36th verses of the xxv. 
chapter of Matthew : ' ' For I was an hungered and ye gave me meat ; 
for I was thirsty and ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger and ye took 
me in ; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick and ye visited me." 
Every sermon preached against this specie basis abomination that fills 
the land with desolation and want, and every other influence and 
labor rendered against it, in behalf of its suffering victims, is a ful- 
fillment of this injunction of scripture. 

Fourth. To refuse this assistance against the oppressions of the 
specie basis fraud, by any one knowing the terrible sufferings that it 
causes, is to disobey this injunction of scripture, and to incur, as it 
seems, the penalty therefor prescribed in the 41st verse of the same 
chapter. 

Fifth. This specie basis fiction is a kind of idolatry, more wicked 
and debasing, it is believed, than the formal worship of images in 
heathenism. This is because of the suffering it produces, -by the 
extremes of wealth and poverty ; and also because the theory of specie 
basis is a blasphemous falsehood, in assuming that the Creator was and 
is so narrow in his plans to meet the wants of his creatures as to make 
gold and silver, or gold alone, as is now assumed, necessary for the 
presence of money, or the basis of money ; and therefor necessary for 
all human business. And, further, this idolatry is meaner than heathen 
worship, because the specie worshipers exercise their devotion without 
seeing any specie, the object of their worship, or even knowing whether 
it exists, except by the deceitful promises and pretenses printed on 
pieces of paper. 



I36 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

Let us have money instituted for money purposes, and based on 
the law of money uses, and then will the cause of religion, as well as 
all other worthy interests, prosper surprisingly better than now, for there 
can then be no extortion in the land ; both church and state will be 
clear of it, and God will be glorified by a people whose institutions 
shall be based upon his own economy of things. 



CHAPTER XLV. 



INDEPENDENTS, TAKE YOUR OWN NEWSPAPERS. 



American laborers, and especially Independents, take your own 
newspapers. You have a few in this country heartily in your own 
interest. Some of them are fairly sustained, but others of them are 
struggling for existence. All of them would fare much better if they 
would sell out to the money power, against which they strive to give you 
solemn warning. It is for you and your children, and for our common 
country, that they are laboring for existence, and some of them 
straightened for means. You ought to sustain them better. 

If one of these papers is presented to you, and you are asked to 
subscribe, you may say it is not newsy enough ; that you can get such 
and such papers for less money and containing a great deal more news. 
And it may be you can. Specie basis, or old party organs, can be had 
cheap ;" large, well executed and well filled with news from all parts of the 
world. As regular as the sun at its rising, they will give you the latest 
births, deaths and marriages in royal families, the obscene scandals, hor- 
rid murders, startling frauds, and the leading gossip of the world's 
aristocracy. They will enrapture you and your wives with thrilling 
stories ; they will give you miscellaneous news, both home and foreign, 
all put up in such flippant and spicy style as to make you enjoy it, 
whether the news itself is of any account or not; and it will be given 
in such vast quantities as to make you wonder that so much can be 
afforded for so little money. The country is flooded with such papers, 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 1 37 

being of every variety of moral tone and political creed, to say nothing 
of the religious, so as to be suited in their variety of sugar coating to 
carry the specie basis treason to all classes. 

These papers are sure to tell you of the beauties of specie basis, 
and the horrors of inflation and the rag baby, or at least vindicate par- 
ties holding these treasonable doctrines. Some of these parties, highest 
in interest and closest enshrined in the affections of the money kings, 
are want to display by fine pictorial illustrations these treasonable doc- 
trines against labor. 

No wonder these papers are well sustained in furnishing this great 
amount of interesting news, when this news is the charming medium by 
which the world, even laborers themselves, are made to receive and* 
adopt as their own, doctrines that enrich the Shylocks at the expense 
of labor itself. Without these papers, imbued with the power of charm, 
doctrines so contradictory to reason and the common experience of men, 
and productive of so much misery could not be palmed off upon any 
community. 

Some of these papers, as well as our own, are industrial sheets, and 
many of them tell us how to perform our toil and conduct our occupa- 
tions and business to better advantage ; for the Shylycks are interested 
in having us produce all the property and wealth possible — this being 
for their benefit. 

But, fellow-laborers, what merit can any newspaper have that can 
compensate for treason against labor. The first and most important 
thing for the laborers of the country to know is how to vote and act so 
as to command for themselves that reward, profit and dignity due to 
them as laborers. Without this knowledge, though they read and learn 
all things else the world over, yet will they be fools and wretches at 
last. Each and everyone of them is interested in having all the others 
also enlightened on this most important point. Knowledge, therefore, 
of any kind, gotten by patronizing a newspaper that teaches treason 
against the rights and interests of labor, is dearly obtained at any price, 
or without any price at all. 

Let us, therefor, patronize no papers that are not loyal to the labor 
interests. If we take the money that we worse than throw away every 
year on the specie basis organs, and pay it to our own loyal, indepen- 
dent, greenback papers, they will come quickly up from their weakness, 
if they have any, and become strong in the dispensing of news, and will 
multiply in numbers and become a great power. So that this very 
reformation of our own foolish habit — of feeding the scorpions that tor- 
ment us with their venom — will itself give a mighty impetus to our cause. 



I38 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

We do not find Shylocks patronizing our independent, greenback papers. 
Let us have the fourth part as much tact and wisdom and self-respect in 
the vindications of our good cause as they have in their bad one, and 
soon we shall be freed from their oppression. 

The following newspapers, it is thought, are entitled to our confi- 
dence and support. There are many others whose names cannot now 
be given : 

The Indianapolis Sun, Indianapolis, Ind. 
Terre Haute Express, Terre Haute, Ind. 
Industrial Age, Chicago, 111. 
. Pomeroy' s Democrat, Chicago, 111. 
Ashland Times, Ashland, Neb. 
Hamilton County News, Hamilton, Neb. 
Grand Rapids Greenback, Grand Rapids, Mich. 
New Haven Union, New Haven, Conn. 
Working man' s Advocate, Chicago, 111. 
The People, Des Moines, Iowa. 
The Spirit of Kansas, Lawrence, Kas. 



CHAPTER XLVL 



PRESIDENT HAYES' INAUAURAL— THE SAME OLD CANT. 

THE BRITISH NOBILITY DOCTRINE AMERICANIZED 

FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME. 



President Hayes, in his inaugural address, tells us that, in his 
"judgment, the feeling of the insecurity inseparable from an irredeem- 
able paper currency with its fluctuations of values is one of the greatest 
obstacles to a return of prosperous times." This is precisely the cant 
that was started by Hugh McCulloch, Secretary of the Treasury, in 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 1 39 

December, 1865, and has been constantly repeated by our Secretaries 
of the Treasury and other finance doctors ever since. What President 
Hayes and the whole money craft mean by "irredeemable paper currency" 
is the legal tender greenback ; and he says this legal tender greenback 
creates uncertainty. 

It is not well to say that the President willfully states an untruth. 
The more charitable view to be taken of the matter is that he, in com- 
mon with office holders and office seekers generally, has been so intent 
in the pursuit of office all his life that he has never really studied into 
the truth of this matter, but only into what it was his best policy, as an 
aspirant, to say about it. Be this as it may, one thing is sure, and that 
is, that what the President here declares to be in his judgment true, is 
in fact the very opposite of the truth. So far from a feeling of uncer- 
tainty being inseparable from this legal tender greenback money, it is the 
only kind of money that has any certainty about it. The legal tender 
principle is the only principle of certainty in any money. If our gov- 
ernment would only proceed to perfect this legal tender principle, by 
making the greenback a legal tender for customs, and then furnish it in 
the proper quantity all over the country, it would be certain to kill all 
the gold gambling, extortion and every species of vampirism in the land. 
Here is where the terror of the rag baby comes in. 

The President has to admit that the times are far from prosperous, 
and says there is 'embarrassment and prostration' in business, and 'depres- 
sion in all our varied commercial and manufacturing interests throughout 
the country.' ' Why is this? Simply for the reason that this same false- 
hood or false doctrine that the President himself here repeats in his inau- 
gural has been the rule and maxim that has been constantly repeated and 
acted upon by our rulers in the finances of the country ever since Decem- 
ber 1865. Legal tender, or irredeemable paper money, so much con- 
demned by our rulers, is the identical thing that gives the French peo- 
ple such wonderful prosperity now, and has for many years past ; and it 
was the very thing that gave the English people such wonderful prosper- 
ity from 1797 to 1815. It was this same thing, also, that gave such uni- 
form certainty and prosperity to Venice for over five hundred years 
without a panic or crisis. This same thing it was, also, that estab- 
lished certainty in our finances in 1862, and gave victory at length to 
our arms ; and has given us all the certainty and business we have had 
ever since. This certainty and prosperity continued until McCulloch, 
1865, started his cant, which is here repeated by President Hayes in 
in his inaugural address ; and the certainty and prosperity have been 
growing less ever since, keeping pace continually in its diminution with 



J 40 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

the withdrawal of the irredeemable paper money, and the waging of the 
money craft's war against it. 

Again, President Hayes, in his inaugural address tells us that "the 
only safe paper currency is one that rests upon a coin basis." Here 
again is a great fundamental error, which in fact is only the counterpart 
of the other error, and is part of the McCulloch cant above mentioned. 
Already, I trust that I have sufficiently considered and refuted this doc- 
trine, and shown that there is not and never can be, in the nature of 
things, any such thing as a reliable specie or coin basis for a currency 
adequate for any commercial nation, and that the idea of a specie basis 
currency is a mere pretext in British institutions for turning the earn- 
ings of labor systematically and constantly from the hands of the laborers 
and producers to the nobility ; and that it is a monarchial principle, and 
should not be tolerated for a moment in any country where Republican 
government is desired to be maintained. 

These doctrines of the President are not here stated for the purpose 
of discussing them, as this we trust has already been sufficiently done in 
this work. But they are stated here only to show the position of this 
new administration on this vital point, and to show that if labor is to be 
set free and saved from perpetual and increasing bondage it must put 
forth its own efforts and save itself. 

It does seem to me that we ought to ask ourselves this question, and 
ask it of everybody, and press it especially to the lips of our rulers, and 
unceasingly demand of them a clear, satisfactory answer, that if legal 
tender or irredeemable paper money is the cause of uncertainty in 
finances, and keeps up the hard times as they say it does, why do they 
not abolish it at once, and why did they not do it eleven years ago 
when McCulloch made the discovery and began his cant? 

Why keep in our finances an element that creates uncertainty and 
hard times? And if specie basis is so reliable for money purposes, why 
not adopt it at once? And why was it not adopted eleven years ago? 
These same specie basis doctors have been overwhelmingly in the majority 
in all the departments of the government, especially the legislative and 
executive, all this eleven years. Why, we ask, have they not put in 
force long ago their doctrines which they repeat so constantly in our 
ears ? It is simply because they (the knowing ones) do know them to 
be utterly false and ruinous to all honest business ; and therefore they 
must be applied by slow degrees and with an immense amount of crafty 
teaching and corrupt party drill and force, to get the people of the 
country to submit to them at all. 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 141 

And again, why is it that our rulers in their words and teachings do 
thus constantly contradict not only the plainest facts, reason and all 
financial experience, but also contradict their own acts indeed in the 
administration of the government. The answer to this is, that through 
our own stupid folly in the matter of elections a large share, perhaps a 
majority, of these rulers belong to the money craft, and those who do 
not have long since learned that it is necessary to suit their words and 
acts to the wishes of the craft, while the people can be persuaded to 
swallow down or submit to anything that is offered. If we of the labor 
interest had our own ideas and would require our rulers to respect them, 
they would do so very promptly, because we are immensely in the 
majority, and can rule if we will. If is after all our own fault that we 
are held in contempt, oppressed and robbed. 

The President also says, that he sees 4 ' indications all around us of 
a coming change to prosperous times." This is also a part of the same 
eleven-year cant. Why do we not make square demand for a fulfill- 
ment of these hundreds of promises and predictions of the rulers, pol- 
iticians and newspapers of the land ? It is as if a medical man should 
say to one in good health, you are quite sick, you look well and feel 
well, but you are diseased, you have too much blood. And by such 
persuasive words get leave to bleed and treat him constantly eleven 
years ; the patient at first feeling a little worse for the treatment, and so 
continuing worse and worse for the whole eleven years, until he becomes 
greatly prostrate, and yet continuing the bleeding and treatment all the 
time under a continued promise that he is about to amend. Could it be 
wondered that the country would abound with quacks, if they could 
find arrant fools enough to impose on in that manner? And can it be 
wondered at that the land is full of demagogues, and is misgoverned 
while the people are so much more ready to confide in the specie basis 
clap-trap of the money craft, the politicians and newspapers, than they 
are to have ideas of their own, based upon their own interests, and 
demand that money shall be instituted for money use, and be sufficient 
in quantity and quality to at all times and places enliven labor and trade? 
Is not this a very simple and reasonable demand ? The country was 
prospering greatly when McCulloch and his aids commenced their cant, 
their blood letting and their treatment eleven years ago. The same 
treatment precisely has, been kept up ever since, under continued prom- 
ises that prosperous times were about to come, and yet all the time we 
have become more and more languid, prostrate and miserable. What 
now is the real cause of this ? It is the treatment and nothing else — 
the same treatment that President Hayes is now continuing. No man 



142 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

can assign any other rational cause except this treatment. But for this 
treatment we should have been greatly prospering. And do not forget, 
that the specie basis fiction has been the great rank poison with which 
we have been treated, and that has dried up the life-blood of the nation, 
and took away its strength, vigor and happiness. 

Furthermore, our President says, in that inaugural address, that 
there is no settled security at the South, and he delivers a long lecture 
urging submission to the laws. His lecture is a vain thing. The inse- 
cure and unsettled condition of the South is owing to this same specie 
basis fiction, which has taken away the life, prosperity and happiness of 
the country, leaving the people in a destitute and poorly employed con- 
dition ; and although having no definite idea of the cause of their 
misery, yet they are apprehensive that something is wrong in govern- 
mental affairs, and in any event they know that they have little to be 
grateful for to the government or to anybody else, and this makes them 
reckless toward themselves, their neighbors and the government. As 
explained in chapters 29 and 36, the way to make the people orderly, 
loyal and law-abiding is to open up before them the opportunities of 
acquiring property and improving their condition by honest industry 
and enterprise. I press this as one of the great truths that can be 
implicitly relied upon as such ; a truth, great and important as it is, our 
rulers seem to wholly disregard it, whether from ignorance or corrupt 
selfish motives, it matters not ; in either case it shows them unfit to rule. 

A glorious thing was this conquering of the South, to murder it by 
depriving it of money through the specie basis fiction. The condition 
of the colored people, upon the whole, certainly cannot be much 
improved as yet by changing that other system of bondage for this one, 
to say nothing of the white people. We must remember that this sys- 
tem of monetary oppression, in its present power and severity, arose 
from the centralization of credit or money power upon the occasion of 
the war for the Union, and, as many of us understood it, in behalf of 
the rights and dignity of labor, also. The creation of this credit or 
money power, in its terrible oppressive form, was not a necessity of the 
war, but a great hindrance, rather, and came originally from the error of 
making the greenback only a partial legal tender, instead of full, as was 
pointed out by Thadeus Stevens at the time. By this terrible mistake 
not only was the length, severity and cost of the, war greatly increased, 
under speculative influences, but a nucleus of corrupt power was thereby 
created that has gone on increasing in might and subtlety from that day 
to this. It has long since formed a close alliance with a similar power 
in England and Germany, and is this day, and for a long time has been, 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 1 43 

the power that rules this nation. What it lacks in the absoluteness of 
Nero, it makes up in subtlety, so that its power is complete as now exer- 
cised. It is simply the irresponsible, heartless, debasing and corrupt 
power of moneyed avarice. 

If this power is to go on in its strength, what have we gained by 
the war ? What better off is the colored man on the whole, to say noth- 
ing of the white? What is this union of States for? What was the 
war for ? And what was that other war for, the war of the revolution ? 
This union of States forms a great nation, of which we, in times past, 
have been justly proud. But where is the cause for pride of being a 
slave even in a great nation ? The equality of right amongst men, the 
right of all to labor and enjoy the benefit of it, and the right of the 
governed to rule, or to be the sources of all governmental power, 
these three things, as some of us understand it, were the essential 
things set forth in the Declaration of Independence, fought out in 
the revolutionary war, and designed to be fought out also in the war of 
1861 — the war for the Union. With these three great principles of lib- 
erty and of republican gofernment, crushed out as is now done, and as 
is determined more completely and permanently to do, if it shall ulti- 
mately be found that they cannot be restored by peaceful means, I hes- 
sitate not to say that another war will be as necessary as any ever was 
in the past. A perpetual civil war could hardly be a greater woe than 
to have this moneyed power, foreign and domestic, continually laying 
its foul, clammy, irresponsible hands upon us, upon our earnings, upon 
our government, our political parties, our newspapers and upon every- 
thing that we have any interest in. 

Our system of money must be for the people and under the control 
of the people, and must supplement the principles of free government 
and not destroy them. It must be such a system as will, in the lan- 
guage of the preamble to the Constitution of the United States, " form 
a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, pro- 
vide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure 
the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." Any system of 
money that does not perform these purposes, but defeats them, must be 
wiped out by any means that may become necessary to that end. 

This specie basis twaddle may do to humbug the British vassals 
with, but in this country there is a different element, that will be found 
to change the case from that of Brittain. Any acts of violence at this 
time would be detrimental to our cause. The reason of this is that we 
are now appealing to reason. Violence tends to dethrone reason. We 
want the reason and understanding of men to do their full calm work. 



144 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

We want the deliberate judgments of the people to take strong hold of 
the great truths that we present. It is not true, as represented by the 
money craft and politicians, that the true principles of money are too 
intricate to be understood by the common people. A man that teaches 
that they are, is nothing but a monarchist, by whatever name he may be 
called. 

But further, President Hayes, in that same inaugural address, puts 
forth about the usual amount of bombast concerning civil service reform. 
He wants an honest administration of government, as he pretends. Now 
if he means what he says, if he really wants an honest administration 
amongst officials, he is taking the wrong way to secure it, by commend- 
ing this specie basis fiction, which is the great fruitful cause of that 
subtle moneyed power that has made not only the government but the 
Republican and Democratic parties, in their general leadership and 
control, one mass of corruption, estranged from and heedless of the 
the interests of the rights of the people. As shown in chapter 30, the 
specie basis fiction tends unavoidably to corrupt the government, while 
the legal tender system of money, by leaving the earnings of the people 
in their own hands, takes away the corruption fund and purifies the 
government. 

The President's policy appears to be to make terms with the rest- 
less, ambitious spirits of the South, identify them in interest with the 
money craft, and thus build up a consolidated money power to crush 
out all discontents, and establish two leading elements throughout the 
country, to wit : the ruling nobility and the degraded vassalage. The 
make-up of his cabinet and the whole tone of his inaugural and other of 
his acts, official and unofficial, indicate this design and principle of the 
man. Especially should be noticed the appointment in his cabinet of 
Carl Schurz, that tool of the foreign moneyed nobility ; and more 
especially still, that of John Sherman, who in all this eleven years of 
decline and increased oppression, has stood up in the United States Sen- 
ate, and, at the head of the finance committee, acting as the leading 
disciple of Hugh McCulloch, has led off in mocking and insulting the 
nation in its growing distress, with the twaddle about specie basis, 
and all the slimy verbiage belonging to that villainous fiction. 

This same Mr. John Sherman, who is now Secretary of the Treas- 
ury under President Hayes, is the author of the principal bills that have 
been passed to the ruin of labor. Shortly before the late inauguration, 
this Mr. Sherman introduced in the Senate a bill to issue gold bonds in 
place of #100,000,000 of the greenbacks, that they might be taken in 
and destroyed, and lor #80,000,000 more of the greenbacks to be 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 1 45 

redeemed with silver coin, and likewise destroyed. Every proposition 
of this man Sherman savors of the rankest ruin to labor and immense 
gain to the millionaire bondholder and creditor class, with a total disre- 
gard of the principles of good faith, honesty, justice or right in the 
premises. Such is the character of the man chosen by President Hayes 
to give counsel in respect to the finances of the country, whereby the 
condition of labor is to be controlled. No other man in the whole nation 
could have been selected so utterly obnoxious to the labor interests as 
this man, Mr. Sherman. 

These things show what the labor interests of the country should 
expect from the administration of President Hayes. Truly, under this 
administration, if American labor does not wish to be completely trod- 
den into the dust, it should arouse itself to action. 

Had Mr. Tilden been inaugurated, instead of Mr. Hayes, we have 
no reason to think that the case would have been essentially different. 
We should have heard the same kind of specie basis cant, and a similar 
cabinet make-up in the interest of the millionaire money lords, and in 
contempt of labor. 



CHAPTER XLVII. 



WHAT IS TO BE DONE— INCENTIVES TO ACTION. 



As hereinbefore stated, although the evils that afflict us are many, 
there is but one cause, and that is this war upon the real money of the 
country, the legal tender greenback and the legal tender principle ; in 
other words, the real money principle of paper money ; or, which is the 
same thing, the war in favor of the specie basis fiction. We should 
clearly understand, first of all things, how utterly false this specie basis 
doctrine is. And then we should know, also, how utterly loathsome, 
above all loathsome and detestable things, it is. More loathsome and 
detestable than anything else, because productive of more evil, wrong 
and misery than any other one thing. This one doctrine, specie basis, 
or specie payments, as you may please to call it, has been the cause of 

10' 



I46 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

all our prostration of labor of all kinds ; and has retarded the nation in 
wealth, happiness and population since the close of the war more than 
twice as much as was done by the war itself, counting all losses on both 
sides. And now it is running the country in debt and under bonds and 
mortgages at a fearful rate. 

Before we can accomplish anything for our deliverance, a clear, 
strong and correct knowledge of the one cause of all our manifold evils 
and sufferings must be made general among all the laboring people of 
the country, in all departments of industry. And then, another thing 
must also be looked to. American laborers must not only acquire a 
knowledge of the loathsomeness of this false doctrine, but they must be 
impressed with the necessity of having, and must actually have, the 
independence and will to oppose it openly by their voices and their 
votes, no difference whose opinions it may bring them in conflict with, 
whether those of their fellows, employers or employed, or those of the 
President of the United States for whom they have voted, or his Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, or any and all parties, politicians and newspapers. 
It must be the leading work for this day and age of the world to be as 
explicit and diligent to get into the minds of all our fellow laborers 
this truthful doctrine of legal tender, as the money craft have to deceive 
them with the contrary doctrine of specie basis. And at the same time 
this truthful doctrine of legal tender must be made so strong, so clear, 
and so familiar to their minds that they will act upon it and vote for it 
boldly, all presidents, secretaries, politicians, political parties and news- 
papers to the contrary notwithstanding. 

To all American laborers, we say, if you cannot understand this 
one truth and understand it so well and clearly as to declare it, work 
for it, and vote for it in the face of the all-powerful influences brought 
to bear upon you to drive you from it, then there is no hope for us, or 
none at least from peaceful means. This is the vital question lying at 
the foundation of all other questions and subjects, that is to determine 
the freedom or slavery of labor. If labor cannot have the mind and 
will to stand up for itself, speak out for itself and vote for itself in this 
one thing, it is entirely useless for it to appear at the polls at all. And 
in fact, in that case, it would be far better to have no popular elections, 
but simply a government of nobles, with a king to govern us. Because, 
in this way, taking no part in choosing rulers or making the laws, our 
rulers would be at least held morally responsible for anything disastrous 
or wrong in the effect of the laws and government. But when we vote 
evils upon ourselves, then being the authors of our own misery, we have 
to come with poorer grace with our grievances against those that rule us. 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 147 

You see, American laborers, the time and country in which we live 
brings upon us great responsibilities. The real success of republican 
government is now on trial, in fact, more essentially than it was in time 
of the late war, or at any time before, unless it was in" the revolutionary 
struggle. The great final result depends on us, and whether we shall 
stand this ordeal of our manhood. It is easy, indeed, for us to do all 
that is required of us, if we only have the mind and the will. Immense 
advantages and benefits and immortal honor, also, will come to us if we 
prove ourselves sufficient for the occasion. Nay, more than this; if we 
come up to the standard of duty in this matter, we shall now establish 
free republican government upon permanent and imperishable princi- 
ples, as shown in chapter 31. Thus shall the labors that we perform 
now, and the sacrifices that we make in this behalf, have their fruit of 
freedom and happiness away down all the time through the generations 
to come. We shall not, therefore, in this undertaking live and work 
for the narrow and short existence of ourselves alone, but also for the 
hundreds of millions of people that shall enliven this our land, (and 
probably, to some extent, at least, the world,) through centuries to come. 
Who does not prefer, since the occasion is opened up therefor, to work 
for posterity, rather than for himself alone? We may rest assured that 
the opportunity now presents itself of establishing in our laws litera- 
ture, education and morals, principles that will stamp their indelible 
impress upon the institutions of men, so as never to lose their effect in 
all the coming generations of our race. And this impress will be such 
. as to greatly elevate man in his enjoyments, his powers, his numbers 
upon the earth, his true dignity, and his relation to .God and eternity. 

Shall we prove ourselves worthy of the great emergency in which 
we are placed ? Or shall we be the short-sighted, besotted, beastly 
man-machines that the sordid money craft and their henchmen, the pol- 
iticians, take us to be, and so, by our own cowardly example, leave the 
world receding into an abjectness of bondage meaner than our own. 



148 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 



CHAPTER XLVIIL 



NECESSARY RULES AND PRECAUTIONS IN OUR INDEPEN- 
DENT POLITICAL MOVEMENT. 



To make sure and carry out our just purposes, and fulfill our re- 
sponsibilities aright, and thus disappoint the expectations of the money- 
craft and all their henchmen, who are looking upon us contemptuously 
from foreign countries, as well as from our own, we should, in my 
opinion, observe and be guided by the following rules and precautions : 

First. Owing to the unparalleled money power arrayed against 
us, with its crafty managers, probably no political movement was ever 
before under such great necessity to be cautious, and to be governed by 
strict rules of safety, so as not to be ensnared by the wiles of our adver- 
aries. 

Second. Be not discouraged by those who say money has always 
triumphed over labor, and always will, and therefore we might as well 
give up. It is not strictly true that money has always triumphed ; and 
not only so, but the world does progress, and we have facilities now for 
the great work before us that no other time or country ever offered. 

Third. Have no confidence in any party, politician, candidate, 
finance scheme or proposition that does not openly and positively 
uphold the exclusive and full legal tender, greenback, inter-convertible 
with low interest government bonds ; and abhor, with outspoken and 
undying hatred and loathing, the specie basis fiction by whomsoever sus- 
tained. 

Fourth. Regard with distrust, and repose no confidence in the 
official and old party newspaper reports, showing dimunition of the 
national debt or other debts of the country, increase of specie, either in 
the government treasury or elsewhere, revival of business or better 
times, either present or prospective, or of any relief to come from getting 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 149 

to a specie basis, so-called. All the matters, and every other matter 
relating to the financial or industrial interests of the country, are con- 
tinually given a false coloring in official and newspaper headquarters, 
and this false coloring goes into the old party or hard money newspaper 
organs throughout the country. Thus are the people deceived and led 
like lambs to slaughter. 

Fifth. Do not become enlisted in other people's quarrels or strifes. 
All contests between the two old parties, or the muddle whether Hayes 
or Tilden was lawfully elected, take no side and no interest in any of 
these matters. We have enough to do to take an interest in ourselves 
and the country, without wasting any time or care in choosing between 
two old parties, both of which are mere tools in the hand of the money 
power to deceive and enslave us. 

Sixth. Very seldom, if ever, have any confidence in newspapers 
or candidates for office, claiming to be greenback in sentiment, but yet 
cling to one or the other of the two old parties. They are the demoral- 
izers of our ranks, and usually do us more harm than outspoken specie 
basis advocates. Let us be united in any event. 

Seventh. Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing, even in our own 
party folds. 

Eighth. Beware of side issues and false issues that will be sprung 
without number on all sorts of subjects, by way of distraction, to divert 
our influences and votes from the great overshadowing interest that all 
labor has in the money question. 

Ninth. Beware of side organizations springing up here and there, 
under the color of industrial reform movements, or any other color, pro- 
vided the object or tendency be to draw or keep votes away from the 
independent greenback party. The inner councils of the money craft 
are and will be alive with meanness to set on foot any schemes of this 
kind, or any other kind, when necessary to save itself from defeat. 
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. 

Tenth. Hold no alliance with either of the old parties, unless one 
or the other of them adopt our principles in full — which will not be 
done. The money craft will unite the two old parties against us, if it 
should ever find that it can defend itself any better against us by so 
doing. But as between our principles and those of either of the old 
parties, there can be no reconciliation or affinity, anymore than between 
fire and water. Better it is for us to remain small in numbers, for the 
present, than be mixed in doubtful relationship. Though it may be 
that a balance of power movement may, in particular cases, gain a 
decided advantage for our principles, it should never be resorted to for 
mere success, unless we can see clear a gain for our principles. 



150 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

Eleventh. Beware of groundless distrust and dissentions amongst 
ourselves. The money craft will do their utmost to destroy our confi- 
dence in our truest and most influential men, and thus break down their 
influence and divide us and destroy us. I incline to think it is true, 
that the worst thorough independent greenback man in the country is 
better than the best specie basis man, who is so from knowledge and 
choice. 

Twelfth. Remember, this is the cause of labor, and by the people of 
labor it must be sustained, if sustained at all. God helps those who 
help themselves. Amongst newspaper men, officers and office seekers, 
who are not themselves personally interested in the extortion and vam- 
pirism of the country, labor will have help in about the proportion that 
it has the stamina to help itself. But very few will sacrifice in the inter- 
est of men that make no sacrifices for themselves. Remember that one 
main difficulty in advancing the labor interests is that the people of 
labor are slow to stand forth firm in their own interests. And amongst 
politicians and public men, generally, there is an unexpressed settled 
idea that any one who really does in good faith serve the interests of 
labor, works for poor pay and many losses. The laboring people can 
well afford to reverse that idea. Remember, also, that the revolutionary 
fathers mutually pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes and 
their sacred honor, for the accomplishment of their purposes. If every 
man that voted for Cooper and Cary, at the 1876 election, small as 
that number is, and poor as most of them are, should now make that 
same mutual pledge that the revolutionary fathers made, and proceed as 
thoroughly to put it into execution as the fathers did, by disseminating 
the great truths and principles of right, that we have on our side to 
fight with in this cause, the strong bulwarks of the enemy would crumble 
away and become as nothing, the triumph of the right would be speedy, 
and, before twelve months, there would be a peaceful revolution in the 
interest of labor that would compensate all sacrifices, and ten-fold more. 
It only needs that men of labor have faith in great truths, and in the 
right, to inspire them with power for this noble work. As once before 
observed, this cause of ours is fully as important to the country and to 
the world as was that of the revolutionary fathers ; and, in fact, if we 
fail to achieve our ends and purposes, the benefits of their achievement 
will be lost to us, to the country and to the world. 

Thirteenth. As the opposition prefer one another in public and 
private matters, and seek to descriminate against us in business and 
otherwise, so let us prefer one another in business and other matters to 
an equal extent. 



OF THfe LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 15I 

Fourteenth. In order that none sacrifice for nought, but that there 
may be concert of action, and the burdens and sacrifices be properly 
distributed and made light for all, let us do all in our power, each one 
in his place or locality, at least, to establish and keep up organizations 
of clubs, etc., etc., in pursuance of such plans and directions as may be 
given us by our national and State central or executive committees. 
Very few realize what power there is in organizations, in which each 
one, or at least certain ones, perform some simple and easy part of the 
great work. 

Fifteenth. Let us vote our own straight tickets. And let us 
make nominations for local officers wherever there are Independents 
enough to nominate. This is right. The labor interests are sacrificed 
every year under the plea of sticking to the party, Republican or Demo- 
cratic, as the case may be. Now it is high time to advance the labor 
interests uncler the same plea. It will be for the good of our cause and 
the country to draw the lines and keep up the distinction between those 
that are trying to protect and reward labor and those that are trying and 
helping to enslave it. It is hoped that the time is not far off when a 
man will be deemed unfit to teach a common school unless he knows and 
can explain to our boys the rudiments of money and finance so necessary 
to the rights of labor. 

Sixteenth. Let us not waste much time or money in circulating 
or presenting petitions to the government on this subject. The 
more we do this (if done as a substitute for voting right,) the less 
heed will our government give to us, and the more will it regard us 
with contempt. The high functionaries now in office have nearly all 
obtained their places by the aid of the money power, and they care 
nothing for the rights, interests or the wants of labor. The only possi- 
ble way for us to command their respect at all will be to proceed to 
organize amongst ourselves, and prepare to become united in our votes 
at the polls for the labor interests. We need say nothing to our gov- 
ernment dignitaries concerning our wants, intentions or doings. 
Depend upon it, they will watch us. We could not keep our intentions 
or doings a secret from them if we wanted to. And if they see us pro- 
ceeding like men in a business way to organize for united, effective 
action at the polls they will yield somewhat to our wants, and will do it 
perhaps as much and as readily without our asking it as with. 

Seventeenth. Let us accept no compromise. As soon, and to such 
extent, as the labor interest of the country attempts effectively to stand 
forth in its own defense, free from the shackles of the money craft and 
of the old parties, just that soon, and to that extent, will the specie basis 



152 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE 

viper have his supple tools, the political tricksters, on hand to corrupt 
and demoralize even our own organization and forces, making conces- 
sions, giving us temporary relief, and charming us with his lullabies, to 
induce us to spare the life of the serpent monster himself, and let him 
live amongst us. This will not do. He has tormented us too much, 
and revealed too far his hideous proportions and proneness to evil to 
dwell among freemen. Let us, therefore, not stop until we shall have 
engraven in our laws, and in all our educational, moral and religious 
codes, that specie basis is a fiction, a fraud and treason to free govern- 
ment ; and that nothing shall be permitted to circulate as money except 
that which shall be made a full legal tender, and inter-convertible with 
government bonds bearing a just rate of interest. 

Eighteenth. Let us never surrender. Let us each one enlist for 
life in this cause. Come victory or come defeat, come poverty or riches, 
come praise or reproach, let us have liberty or die in the struggle for it. 
Let us each be ready to do our part in the contest, whatever form it may 
assume. If it shall be so, under the judgments of God, that the nation 
must have an awful baptism of fire and blood to cleanse it of its filthy 
and cruel abominations, let us not skulk or shrink from our duty. Those 
who perish on the side of freedom in the conflict will die glorious deaths, 
and those who live through it will, in all probability, see a glorious tri- 
umph of the right and the truth, animating the nation with new and 
incomparable health, and life and power. This is, indeed, no cause in 
which to make cowardly, imbecile and vacilating experiments as to the 
matter of success. 



CHAPTER XLIX. 



CONCLUSION. 



We do not know whether we have written this little work in the 
most advantageous style or not. Possibly we have been too plain, and, 
apparently, too bitter, and reflected unnecessarily upon the motives and 
honorable standing of some persons and classes. We have not designed, 
however, to go beyond the truth in these matters, nor to lay open the 
truth, even, only so far as necessary to explain the truths and reasons of 



OF THE LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 1 53 

our subject, and to account fairly for the conduct of men in relation to 
these truths. We will not boast that we have explained our subject to 
perfection. It may be that we have come much further short of this 
than we are aware of. But of this one thing, fellow-laborers, be assured, 
as stated at the beginning, by following the advice and counsel of this 
work, there will be great prosperity of labor amongst us — prosperity 
equal to and greater than that of the French labor, as described on page 
9, or that of the English, from 1797 to 181 5, as described on pages 28 
and 29, and this prosperity will be to all kinds of useful labor; it will be 
everywhere, in all parts of the United States, and it will be all the time, 
from year to year, and from one generation to another. Peace, har- 
mony, genuine loyalty and submission to the laws will be established, 
and our government will be purified and reformed in very truth, and 
be established upon permanent republican principles. 

Should it be, that from the author's fault in his explanations or 
style, that the reader does not yet see the truthfulness and importance of 
the doctrines of this work to his own satisfaction, it is most earnestly 
hoped, that from some means, he has seen such degree of probability or 
possibility of their truth and great importance, as to awaken his interest 
to follow up the subject, by another careful reading of this work, and 
such other means, as to lead him to a correct knowledge of this matter. 

And then we say further to the American laborers, that even after 
the most careful and patient consideration of the subject, if from both 
the philosophy of the matter and from the experience of the different 
countries and times, as given through the writings and utterances of 
others, you should be unable to satisfy your minds of the entire truth- 
fulness and great importance of our doctrines, still we urge you to give 
them a trial in the administration of the government, for you have 
ample power to do so if you will. You have now tried the specie basis 
doctrine eleven years. It found all labor in a highly prosperous condi- 
tion, at least in the North, where there was money. Prostration of all 
labor and business, the bankruptcy and robbery of our most useful and 
enterprising men, and the destitution and suffering of labor, have been 
on the increase, growing upon us during the whole eleven years, from 
the time this specie basis trial commenced, and that, too, in the face of 
continual promises of better times about to commence, or actually com- 
menced, as was often alleged. 

Now wipe out all this specie basis fiction and verbiage, and adopt 
our full legal tender, inter-convertible system, and if it does not prove 
itself the true system in less than one year, in spite of all the powers of 
the world's money craft to prevent it, then for one I will admit that I 



154 HOW CAN WE OBTAIN THE PASSAGE OF LAWS TO PROSPER LABOR. 

am mistaken. We need no eleven years of broken promises in which to 
make our experiment. One year will be amply sufficient to demonstrate 
what a grand imposition this eleven years of specie basis twaddle has 
been; what a useless expense of life, of health, of property and charac- 
ter, both public and private, and how utterly anti-Republican it is in its 
nature and effect. 

Under this legal tender system of ours, there will be no strikes of 
employes. This chafing and cramping and complaining of the different 
occupations of infringement by others will cease. There will not be 
one case of bankruptcy where there are ten now. There will be no 
money panics. It will be out of the power of the vampires and extor- 
tioners to produce them. The monopoly over money being done away, 
and all money being established upon the true money basis, and adapted 
to money uses alone, and not to the purpose of vampirism or extortion, 
the prices of labor and of all other things will adjust themselves properly 
in the natural course of business, and all useful occupations will grow 
together, each being invigorated by the prosperity of the others. 

Every man in every section of the country will find opening up 
right before him the opportunities of acquiring property and improving 
his condition by honest employment, such employment as will build up 
others instead of destroying them. Political and financial villany will 
loose their high premium that they now command, and, sinking far 
below par, will entirely disappear, from the open market at least ; while 
honest industry will come up from its heavy discount and command the 
premium. 

Thus shall we prosper. Our prosperity will not be partial but 
universal. It will not be spasmodic or imaginary, but substantial, con- 
stant and enduring. We shall own our farms, shops, factories, mines, 
railroads and all improvements. We shall own the country, own our- 
selves and own our government. Healthy and vigorous within our- 
selves, and strong against encroachments from without, our nation will 
go forward, joyous in its career, to the fulfillment of that unknown 
degree of greatness and night of purpose and destiny which it may please 
the counsel of infinite mercy and wisdom to appoint unto us. 

When the laws are right, then labor doth always prosper. 
When labor prospers well, then all things right do prosper. 
When labor prospers not, then nothing right doth prosper. 
Then, first, fix right the laws, so that labor shall prosper. 



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